FIA GT1 sounds sweet
Touring cars are great to watch for a number of reasons. Mostly notably the racing is extremely close and you’ll see cars passing each other in places that you never thought possible. Another draw, for me anyway, has always been that you can clearly see that they carry some DNA from their road-car equivalents.
Let’s ignore the silhouette racers in Germany’s DTM for the moment, and the fact that underneath the shells of WTCC and BTCC cars very few have anything resembling what you’d find on your mother’s SEAT. What’s important is that these cars look like something you could go and buy in a showroom the next day. ‘Race on Sunday, sell on Monday’, as they say.
You can imagine my excitement then at the fast-approaching new FIA GT1 World Championship. Ford GT40s, Lamborghini Murciélagos, Corvettes, DBR9s, MC12s and GT-Rs on tracks such as Spa, Interlagos, Silverstone and the Nürburgring. Oh, how the mouth waters… As the promoter of GT racing Stephane Ratel points out, “they are truly inspirational cars – the ones everyone dreams of owning”.
The series, the fourth FIA-sanctioned World Championship after Formula 1, WTCC, WRC and Formula 2, has 10 events on four continents with 24 cars expected to grace each grid. Twelve teams will run two cars each with the same livery and each race will be a one-hour affair or, as the video below suggests, a one-hour long cacophony of engine noise. The European-based FIA GT2 and GT3 championships will also support the events with their own races.
“We have shaped the new championship with the aim of making GT racing more fan and media friendly,” Ratel continues. “Before, the racing consisted of long-distance racing, a mix of GT-spec cars in the same race, teams competing with a number of different cars – it was all very confusing to follow. It takes time for any sports series to become well established but GT racing will take a major step forward in becoming one of the major World Championships in 2010.”
Ratel (above) is certainly the right man for the job when it comes to making a success of a GT1 championship. Let’s hope it is exactly that, as these cars will be great to watch. The season kicks off on April 17 in Abu Dhabi – a date for the diary, I would have thought…
Filed under: Blogs, Events, Sportscars
Tags: Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Corvette, DBR9, FIA, Ford, GT 40, GT-R, Lamborghini, Maserati, MC12, Murcielago, Nissan, Stephane Ratel
Ed returned from a stint in Milan, working on the Italian version of Autocar, and joined the team in August 2007. After two years of countless scooter accidents and a constant battle against coffee addiction it was a relief for him to start writing in his mother tongue. As well as managing the website, Ed writes various features and is a regular contributor to CNN, Channel 4, Sky News, the BBC and a number of radio stations. He was also awarded the MSA/Renault Young Motoring Journalist of the Year in January 2009. 
John Saviano:
February 9th, 2010 6:18pm
I’d welcome a return to the “glory days” of sportscar racing. Cars that bear a strong resemblance to their street brethren, with different engines, etc, racing against one another. Grand Am is essentially boring to me, with mostly identical hideous cars and while LeMans/ALMS is still a good series, not enough prototypes and not enough variation in the lower classes.
Duncan:
February 10th, 2010 7:10pm
Ratel talks a good game, but I’ve got some serious doubts. Sprint racing isn’t a bad idea, but why bother with driver changes? I think the answer is so that the gentlemen drivers funding the cars can get their turn,. which is hardly great in a world championship status series. Most of the manufacturers, and in fact, all of the big ones in GT racing, were not interested in his new rules, and wanted to stick to GT2 rules. Instead, he pressed on with new rules, and now most of the cars on the grid will be old GT1 cars as very few people are building new rules cars. The one big manufacturer involved, Nissan, doesn’t even run their stock motor in the GT-R, and instead fit a 5 litre V8 (is the stock engine that rubbish?).
It really strikes me that Ratel answered a bunch of questions no one asked in a bid to make the series his own personal vision, rather than creating a GT World Championship which actually would be viable and well-supported from the get-go.
NaBUru38:
February 15th, 2010 2:44pm
GT sprint races would be something interesting for me to see… were it not that ESPN and Fox Sports will hardly broacast the championship here in Latin America.
F2 is FIA-sanctioned but isn’t a world championship.