The journey to the Italian Adriatic coast was definitely worth it for Fabian Schiller. As a complete newcomer in GT3-race driving, the 19-year-old German driver was allowed to drive a Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the team HTP Motorsport from Altendiez and impressed the whole gathered European sports car elite with his outstanding racing speed. He and his Dutch team mate Jules Szymkowiak finished the qualification race of the overall 34 participants behind their team mates Franck Perrera/Maximilian Buhk on second place. On Sunday the duo ended up on the great 12^th place despite two penalties.

The speed Fabian Schiller has in furthering his motorsports career is remarkable. After the traditional start at kart racing, the driver from Eschmar already managed to enter Formula racing at 16 years old. There, he first gathered lots of experiences at the ADAC Formula Masters and then at the Formula 3 European Championship. In 2016 he entered the sports car scene for the first time and registered for the Renault Sport Trophy, which he dominated from the beginning and finished competently by winning the Championship title. In the meantime the native of Bonn also accepted invitations to some long distance races on the Nürburgring North Loop, where he was able to impress in the BMW M235i Cup as well as in the Cup-Porsche Carrera 911. Last winter, Schiller entered the prototype sport and started in a LMP2-bolide in the Asian Le Mans Series, where he won straightaway in Japanese Fuji. The next step on his way to pro sports now is the Blancpain GT Series, which is carried out across Europe with GT3-sports cars of diverse manufacturers and is going to consist of five sprint- as well as five endurance-events in 2017.

After only a couple of test kilometers, Schiller gave his debut at HTP Motorsport last weekend on the Misano World Circuit close to Rimini and impressed his team leader Norbert Brückner from the start with competitive lap times. He already drove a time of 1:33,349 minutes during qualifying and was thereby on fifth place, only a few tenth of seconds behind his experienced team mates on pole position. The reigning Renault R.S. 01-Champion drove even further forward during the qualification race on Saturday evening and in the end, second place behind Perrera and Buhk meant a double victory for the Mercedes team.

The joy regarding a complete first starting row for the HTP team in the main race on Sunday only lasted a short time though, because a competitor had protested against Schiller and Szymkowiak’s car, saying the Dutchman had lightly collided with his car when entering the pit lane. The consequence was a penalty of ten positions back to twelfth place. From there, starting driver Schiller started his catching-up race immediately and drove forward to eighth place. During his try to overtake two considerably slower opponents he came in contact with the car at the front, which caused both of them to turn and fall back again. Additionally the officials put a drive through penalty against the Mercedes with start number 85, which threw Fabian back to the end of the field. The HTP-driver fought his way back to midfield again and passed the sports car on 15^th place to 21-year-old Jules Szymkowiak during the mandatory pit stop, who was then able to end up on a satisfactory 12^th place. This was still enough for the competent win of the Silver Cup, a special ranking for young drivers who don’t have professional status yet.

Even though he wasn’t able to end up on the podium a second time, Schiller summed things up positively in the end. “Even though I only had a short amount of time to get used to the completely new vehicle, the adjustment went really well. The car was perfectly adjusted from the beginning. That’s why I was able to already drive really fast times during qualifying and came in fifth right away, which was really good among this strong field of participants. To be honest, we were a little surprised by already coming in second at the qualification race, especially because we’re by far the youngest driving duo with 19 and 21. Our team really has done an outstanding job calibrating the vehicle, because we basically were the fastest drivers on the track throughout the entire race!”

The next event of the Blancpain GT Series is going to be an endurance-race and is also going to take place in Italy: From April 21^st – 23^rd on the high-speed track of Monza.

Text: F. Wagner / Schiller Motorsport – Photos: Blancpain GT Series