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GT Racing
DAGYS: The Collapse Of GT1
John Dagys looks back at the ill-fated GT1 World Championship and the potential after effects...
The FIA GT1 World Championship launched in 2010 with much hope and promise. It will end, at least under SRO control, this year. (Photo: DPPI/SRO)
With grids just barely reaching double digit numbers, including the handful of series-funded teams, along with a recent rash of cancelled rounds, the future of the FIA GT1 World Championship appeared to be questionable, at best.
That’s why Wednesday’s news that the SRO Motorsports Group would pull the plug on the GT1 World and GT3 European Championships for 2013 came as no complete surprise. For industry insiders, the writing was on the wall, perhaps for as far back as the series’ debut race more than two years ago.
READ: SRO Axes GT1 World, GT3 European Championships
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, especially on the part of SRO founder and CEO Stephane Ratel, who saw his dream of a FIA-sanctioned World Championship for GT cars come to fruition. The former sports car driver turned series promoter, the mastermind behind the BPR Global GT Series in the mid-90s, saw an opportunity to take GT racing to the next level and ran with it.
Transforming the SRO-run FIA GT Championship into the first officially recognized sports car World Championship in nearly two decades, Ratel persevered through difficult economic times, with the launch of the GT1 World Championship in 2010 coming amid the tail end of the global recession.
What made Ratel’s plan stand out, and arguably make sense on paper, was the fact that GT1 World relied heavily on privateers and not direct manufacturer involvement. At a time when the likes of Audi and Peugeot were spending upwards of $100 million on their factory Le Mans prototype programs, an independent team could go race in GT1 for nearly 1/25th of the cost.
Ratel also banked on the simplicity of two-car teams, each campaigning a different brand, along with the unique sprint race format of two one-hour races each race meeting. While it no doubt produced some of the most entertaining, and incident-filled, sports car racing seen in decades, the innovative concept was simply not sustainable, at least on a global level.
What began with a 22-car grid for the series’ debut race at the Yas Marina Circuit in 2010 dwindled to 18 full-season entrants in 2011 and the same number for this year, although three of the teams had been “series-engineered” in order to fulfill the minimum grid per circuit contracts. By the most recent round in Portimao earlier this month, a mere 14 cars turned up.
Competition from newly launched European GT championships, ironically one of them being the SRO-run Blancpain Endurance Series, arguably took away potential GT1 entrants. One could also argue that the constant fluctuation of regulations, which began with a mix of old and new-breed GT1 cars, followed by the adoption of entirely GT3-spec cars for 2012, didn't help the stability of the series, either. And that's not to mention Ratel's rigid structure, which prevented single-car efforts or multiple teams campaigning the same brand.
While car counts fluctuated, so did the schedule, with no fewer than a half-dozen revisions having been made to the 2012 calendar since its initial release late last year. The latest bombshell came with the cancellation of the Ordos and Beijing rounds, which not only left a significant gap in the season, but only one scheduled race outside of Europe following the postponement of the planned Korean event and nixed Argentinean round.
Ratel's plan of visiting far-flung destinations such as India and China, and often absorbing the team's transportation and logistics costs, no doubt put SRO in a challenging financial situation as it tried to grow the championship on the global stage.
Despite some critics having written-off GT1 nearly from the start, Ratel kept defying the odds, pulling preverbal rabbits out of his hat, often at the critical moments to ensure the championship’s short-term survival. And following the challenges of this year, one would have thought he’d use another lifeline to dig the series out of the latest rut.
However, after three seasons of digging, Ratel has thrown in the towel on his World Championship dream for now.
You have to commend him, though, for making the call now, halfway through the year, rather than fighting it out to the bitter end, and likely ending in defeat in front of fans, teams and drivers that were counting on a 2013 championship.
But where does Ratel, the SRO and GT racing go from here?
That’s why Wednesday’s news that the SRO Motorsports Group would pull the plug on the GT1 World and GT3 European Championships for 2013 came as no complete surprise. For industry insiders, the writing was on the wall, perhaps for as far back as the series’ debut race more than two years ago.
READ: SRO Axes GT1 World, GT3 European Championships
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, especially on the part of SRO founder and CEO Stephane Ratel, who saw his dream of a FIA-sanctioned World Championship for GT cars come to fruition. The former sports car driver turned series promoter, the mastermind behind the BPR Global GT Series in the mid-90s, saw an opportunity to take GT racing to the next level and ran with it.
Transforming the SRO-run FIA GT Championship into the first officially recognized sports car World Championship in nearly two decades, Ratel persevered through difficult economic times, with the launch of the GT1 World Championship in 2010 coming amid the tail end of the global recession.
What made Ratel’s plan stand out, and arguably make sense on paper, was the fact that GT1 World relied heavily on privateers and not direct manufacturer involvement. At a time when the likes of Audi and Peugeot were spending upwards of $100 million on their factory Le Mans prototype programs, an independent team could go race in GT1 for nearly 1/25th of the cost.
Ratel also banked on the simplicity of two-car teams, each campaigning a different brand, along with the unique sprint race format of two one-hour races each race meeting. While it no doubt produced some of the most entertaining, and incident-filled, sports car racing seen in decades, the innovative concept was simply not sustainable, at least on a global level.
What began with a 22-car grid for the series’ debut race at the Yas Marina Circuit in 2010 dwindled to 18 full-season entrants in 2011 and the same number for this year, although three of the teams had been “series-engineered” in order to fulfill the minimum grid per circuit contracts. By the most recent round in Portimao earlier this month, a mere 14 cars turned up.
Competition from newly launched European GT championships, ironically one of them being the SRO-run Blancpain Endurance Series, arguably took away potential GT1 entrants. One could also argue that the constant fluctuation of regulations, which began with a mix of old and new-breed GT1 cars, followed by the adoption of entirely GT3-spec cars for 2012, didn't help the stability of the series, either. And that's not to mention Ratel's rigid structure, which prevented single-car efforts or multiple teams campaigning the same brand.
While car counts fluctuated, so did the schedule, with no fewer than a half-dozen revisions having been made to the 2012 calendar since its initial release late last year. The latest bombshell came with the cancellation of the Ordos and Beijing rounds, which not only left a significant gap in the season, but only one scheduled race outside of Europe following the postponement of the planned Korean event and nixed Argentinean round.
Ratel's plan of visiting far-flung destinations such as India and China, and often absorbing the team's transportation and logistics costs, no doubt put SRO in a challenging financial situation as it tried to grow the championship on the global stage.
Despite some critics having written-off GT1 nearly from the start, Ratel kept defying the odds, pulling preverbal rabbits out of his hat, often at the critical moments to ensure the championship’s short-term survival. And following the challenges of this year, one would have thought he’d use another lifeline to dig the series out of the latest rut.
However, after three seasons of digging, Ratel has thrown in the towel on his World Championship dream for now.
You have to commend him, though, for making the call now, halfway through the year, rather than fighting it out to the bitter end, and likely ending in defeat in front of fans, teams and drivers that were counting on a 2013 championship.
But where does Ratel, the SRO and GT racing go from here?
FIA GT Nogaro
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