Next weekend the tenth and last event of the Blancpain-GT Series is going to take place on the Circuit de Catalunya

The Circuit de Catalunya in Montmeló, a small town with just about 9000 inhabitants located about 20km north of Barcelona, is going to be the location of the tenth and last run of the Blancpain-GT Series next weekend. The sprint cup with races of an hour duration already finished two weeks ago on the Nurburgring. Now the last of the long distance races is the last event on the program. All in all, more than 50 teams from all over Europe are going to fight for championship points at the three hour race with their GT3-cars at the “Festival de la Velocidad” on Sunday, October 1st from 3pm until the overall winner of the 2017 season of the popular sports car series is going to be set. 

Fabian Schiller has already reached his first goal of the season. As a new driver, a so-called “rookie”, he applied for the team HTP Motorsport from Altendiez at the beginning of the year and got the chance to show his skills in a more than 500HP-strong Mercedes-AMG GT3. The 20-year-old son of former sports car driver and Le Mans-team leader Hardy Schiller impressively justified the trust that team leader Norbert Brückner had put in him with a series of class victories as well as the premature win of the silver cup for young drivers with the according status of the automobile world federation FIA. 

At least since the middle of the season Schiller wants to achieve more than just being the best young driver of the Blancpain-GT series. The Bonn born driver already highlighted his ambition regarding a good result on the overall list of rankings at the 24-hour-race in Spa-Francorchamps, which also belonged to the endurance cup of the series. While almost half of his opponents fell out during the challenging marathon over 48 hours, Fabian drove his laps on the more than 7km long track in the Ardennes without mistakes. In the end the sports car of the HTP team, which he shared with Austrian Dominik Baumann as well as Swede Edward Sandström, crossed the finish line on the great seventh place and Schiller could be proud of driving the fastest lap out of all Mercedes drivers. 

Baumann and Sandström are also going to be Fabian Schiller’s team partners at the final event of the Blancpain-series in Barcelona and it is going to be the international trio’s goal to add as many points as possible to their already gained 19 points. The qualifying is of special importance at a long distance race over 180 minutes as well. Only if they manage to position the sports car with starting number 85 on a good starting position due to a fast lap time is it going to be possible to steer clear of the usual quarrels during the first bends and drive off without any problems. If the pit stops including tire and driver changes go perfectly as well, nothing is going to stand in the way of another success by Fabian Schiller. 

“Of course we’re going to try everything to end up as far at the front as possible”, Schiller says fiercely. “We don’t have a chance of winning the drivers’ title anymore but HTP Motorsport can still win the team championship in Barcelona. We’re currently 15 points behind, but there are still 26 points to be dealt out.” Norbert Brückner is just as motivated as his team before the final race: “Unfortunately we can’t change the outcome of the endurance cup anymore due to our zero-points-weekend in Le Castellet. But we want to try all the more to use our small chance at the team ranking of the Blancpain-GT series. 15 points backlog is a lot, but as long as there’s still a chance, we’re going to fight. We know that absolutely everything has got to go well to drive at the front among this incredible competition. But my team has proven time and again that they can do it.”

Fabian Schiller has gained a lot of new fans in the region who want to continue to follow the young race driver’s career from the Rhein-Sieg-area now, due to his spectacular catching-up race at his home race on the Nurburgring. No one has to fly to Spain for this though, because qualifying as well as the race on the 4,6km long Grand Prix track at the gates of the Catalan capital are going to be broadcast live on the Youtube-channel of the Blancpain-GT series. Additionally there is also going to be the popular live-timing of all sessions as well as lots of additional information at www.blancpain-gt-series.com. 

Text und Fotos: Farid Wagner / Schiller Motorsport