The curtain came down on the 2018 Blancpain GT Series Asia Series this afternoon (14 October) at Ningbo, China and for Aidan Read it brought to a close another impressive season of GT3 racing, one in which the young Australian driver continues to develop.
Ningbo International Speedpark is an especially demanding track and one that always produces its fair share of incident and accident. This year marked the debut of the Asian GT3 championship competing at the venue and again, it produced its fair share of excitement with Aidan securing a hard-fought tenth position in the opening race before avoidable contact eliminated him from the season finale.
“Overall it has been a good season though and I’m very happy with my development this year and the operation of Craft-Bamboo Racing,” Aidan said. “With the progress I have made means that going forward I’ll be in a position to get pole positions and win races with a focus always on the championship. I’m driving better than ever and that can only be positive.”
Saturday’s opening race saw teammate Darryl O’Young make a good start, avoiding the various incidents on the first lap to gain four position and run in sixth place ahead of the safety car deployment. A further position was gained briefly, before he lost two places ahead of the mandatory stop where he handed the Porsche 991 GT3 R over to Aidan.
Running seventh after the stop, Aidan was on the pace straight away but also under sustained pressure from the #888 GruppeM Mercedes, which duly snuck by on lap 22. A second safety car in the closing laps was unfortunate as it closed up the field and at the restart, Aidan was unable to hold back Tim Slade and Marco Mapelli and he took the chequered flag in tenth position. It was a tough race with little reward, but for Aidan, it was the best result possible from the package in what has overall been a positive season.
“Yesterday qualifying and race one went well from my side,” he explained. “I pushed to get as much as I could from the car. Darryl and I started P10 and ended P10, but it was so much more complicated than that with constant battling from cars in front and behind. Today in race two, unfortunately I got caught up in a racing incident and damaged the front left corner. I made up positions off the start but felt a hit from behind which started a chain reaction and put us out of the race.”
The Blancpain GT Series Asia championship may have come to an end, but for Aidan there is still plenty of racing on the horizon. He will compete in the Thai Super Series in a Lamborghini Gallardo, before turning his attention to the LMP3 challenge with Eurasia Motorsport in the Asian Le Mans Series.
“In two weeks’ time I’ll be back out racing again, this time with Vattana Motorsport, so that is my immediate focus,” he said. “After that there is still a lot of racing to come this year, so there’s a good opportunity to finish 2018 well. I still have unfinished business however in Blancpain GT Asia and GT3, so I am looking forward to the coming races in the various championships.”