FIA GT Championship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The FIA GT Championship is a sports car racing series organized by the Stéphane Ratel Organisations (SRO) at the behest of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship is mostly concentrated in Europe, but throughout the years has visited other continents, most lately visiting Asia.
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[edit] Regulations
FIA currently defines two categories of GT cars: GT1, or Grand Touring Cars, and GT2, or Series Grand Touring Cars. Each category has an annual driver champion, team champion, and manufacturer champion. Both categories are based on production road car designs, which must be produced in a minimum quantity of 25 examples to qualify. Both types may undergo significant modifications from the road car they are based on, but GT1 allows the use of exotic materials, better aerodynamics, larger brakes, wider tires and larger engine admission restrictors.
For the 2006 season, the FIA has created a new class called GT3. GT3 cars are even closer to their production counterparts and are very simply racetrack prepared with the essentials (rollcages for safety, stripped interiors, race spec fuel tanks, etc.). Prestigious motorsports makes such as Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Dodge, Lamborghini and Maserati take part in FIA GT3 European Championship, a support series in some rounds of the main championship.
The FIA defines a GT car as "an open or closed automobile which has no more than one door on each side and a minimum of two seats situated one on each side of the longitudinal centre line of the car; these two seats must be crossed by the same transversal plane. This car must be able to be used perfectly legally on the open road, and adapted for racing on circuits or closed courses."
All races in the FIA GT Championship were of endurance type, a full race distance lasting a minimum of 500km or a maximum of three hours, with the exception of the Spa 24 Hours and the exhibition Mil Milhas Brasileiras, which is run over a thousand miles and was planned to be a round of the championship in 2007. However, with the release of the 2007 FIA GT Championship season schedule and rules, the FIA GT series becomes more of a sprint race event, with all races being a maximum of 2 hours with the exception of the Spa 24 Hours, and no Mil Milhas on the schedule.
[edit] History
- For information on the earlier series, see BPR Global GT Series.
In 1997, due to increasing interest from manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Panoz, the FIA took over control of the expanding BPR Global GT Series, standardizing the race-length at 500 km instead of the usual four hours, liberalizing the technical regulations and leaving commercial exploitation in the hands of one of BPR's founders, Stéphane Ratel, who managed to get TV support from the pan-European TV station Eurosport. The new manufacturers built "homologation specials", racing-bred cars that took full advantage of the new rules, to build quasi-prototypes with very limited production runs of 25 cars. Chrysler, Lister and Marcos, not wanting to accompany the cost escalation, moved down to the GT2 class.
This proved to be the wisest move, as Mercedes completely dominated the new category and the other manufacturers pulled out after the end of the 1998 season. This left Chrysler's Viper to become the dominating car in the series, with the aging Porsche 993 GT2 and the Lister Storm providing a certain degree of competition.
However, there was no lower inexpensive category for amateur drivers, and this led to the creation of the N-GT class in 2000. While the manufacturer field in the main class blossomed, the new category became swamped with Porsches and Ferraris, but lower running costs meant both classes enjoyed a balanced number of entries. In order to boost the championship's status, the SRO added the 24 Hours of Spa, previously a touring car race, to the calendar, where it became the series' most important race. The FIA also banned official manufacturer involvement, although certain teams had preferential treatment, with Porsche establishing a "round robin" system.
After the end of the 2004 season, the FIA renamed the classes GT1 and GT2, and somewhat liberalized the GT1 regulations, allowing "supercars". While this was made to accommodate the Saleen S7, the biggest beneficiary was the purpose-built Maserati MC12, which lead the FIA to impose aerodynamic limitations on the Italian car. However, thanks to a weight penalty system, the fight for the championship is protected from more domineering cars. The level of competition remains tight, with gentlemen drivers managing to fight for the wins with professional drivers, some of them with Formula 1 experience.
[edit] Split with the World Touring Car Championship
Before 2006, both the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) and the FIA GT Championship were broadcast by Eurosport. But Eurosport requested SRO, the FIA GT Championship organizers, to shorten their races from 3 hours to 2 hours. SRO refused and since then it has not been on the bill with the WTCC.
Ironically, after a year looking for European broadcasters for their 3 hour races, the SRO decided that for 2007, the FIA GT Championship races will be shortened to 2 hours.
