Aditya Patel and team-mate Mitch Gilbert had the best possible start to their 2017 Blancpain GT Series Asia campaign. The duo managed to finish first in Race 1 of Round 1 of the championship held at Sepang.
For Race 1, Patel and Gilbert were on pole. Gilbert had set the fastest lap during qualifying, and began the race for the team. However, he didn’t make as good a start in the race as the Ferrari 448 of Anthony Liu Xu. But despite the fact that the two were sparring over the first few laps, the Safety Car was brought out due to an accident.
When racing got underway once again, Gilbert managed to run away at the head of the field. He maintained a gap to the chasing pack until he had to hand over the car to his team-mate, Patel, for the second stint. When Patel took over, he kept his head down and managed to maintain the gap to the chasing pack, crossing the finish line first, giving the ODRacing duo their first race win of the season.
Second place went to Raffaele Marciello and Hunter Abbott of the GruppeM team in their Mercedes AMG GT3. FIST Team AAI’s Oliver Millroy and Jesse Krohn took third place in their BMW M6 GT3.
