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Opening Weekend Of The FIA GT Series
By by: Andrew Cotton
Apr 15, 2005, 11:44

On lap 70, of 87, the top four cars contesting the opening round of the FIA GT Championship at Monza at the weekend were separated by little more than four seconds. Michael Bartels led in his Maserati from Anthony Kumpen’s Corvette, with Fabio Babini’s Maserati third and Pedro Lamy’s Ferrari fourth. There were no safety cars, this was pure, gloves off racing that had the 40,000 people in attendance on their feet in appreciation.

Seven laps later and four became three as, heartbreakingly, Kumpen’s ‘Vette started puffing out smoke towards Lesmo One, and by the time he hit the Ascari chicane flames appeared under the hood. The Belgian returned to the pits with the floor under the engine swimming in oil – a line had come loose ten laps from home. The team were despondent but it had been a hell of a show on a track where the Maseratis were supposed to reign supreme.

Lamy was voted the driver of the race as he hounded the two cars ahead, picking them off to cross the line just 0.9s clear of Bartels, with Babini 1.4s off the winner, all three having run the gauntlet on their fuel allowances to make it to the end of a stunning race. Back in the paddock, series promoter Stephane Ratel was grinning from ear to ear. This is just what he needed as he is looking at a critical change in direction for his championship.

Ratel has run the FIA GT Championship, and its fore-runner, the BPR series, since 1994. He saw it grow big, quickly, with Mercedes, Porsche, McLaren and Lotus, and then he saw it collapse. He started again, building it steadily with the help of European satellite channel Eurosport, and introduced the European Touring Car Championship in 2001. He formulated a package, with the ETCC and Renault, which maintained the same format at each circuit, turning the LG Super Racing Weekends into the most successful European race series based on a solid platform.

However, the manufacturers’ budgets increase, and they demand more for their money. Late in 2004, the announcement came that Ratel would step down from his role as chairman of the LG Super Racing Weekend. The promotion of the weekends was taken over by a committee of manufacturer representatives who put the newly named FIA World Touring Car Championship at the top of the list of priorities, and began the end of what has been a successful relationship.

The ETCC and GT Championship began to split at the end of the season, Ratel taking his Ferraris, Saleens and Lamborghinis off to Dubai and Zhuhai in China, without the touring cars. Just six rounds will run together this year; the WTCC will go to Mexico at the end of June, Macau and Valencia, while the GTs will go alone to Brno in the Czech Republic, Dubai and Zhuhai, and Bahrain. More of the same is expected in 2006 but, in 2007, the relationship will likely formally end, leaving the WTCC with Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, SEAT and Chevrolet, and the GT Championship with its private teams and a new start for Ratel.

Sunday’s race was a humdinger. Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Saleen, Lister and Porsche were all represented by customer teams who have raised the budget to run the super cars. At Silverstone in May, Aston Martin will race for the first time and, later this year, the Nissan 350Z is also expected to run in the GT2 class. For Ratel, Monza and the coming months are just what he needs, especially with what he has in mind for his series.

The superiority of the Maserati, hailed as the Grim Reaper of endurance racing, was not in evidence at Monza. The V12 engines were heavy on fuel, the cars were lumped with another 10kg of ballast before they even started, and the rear wing was reduced by a further 10cm. At Monza, their strongest track, they qualified in four of the top six places, and raced to four of the top five, but it could so easily have been a Corvette taking second place on the podium.

The performance balancing formula works, and the MC12 will struggle at the tighter, twistier Magny Cours circuit in three weeks. “The FIA has seen racing in America, with the balancing of performance,” said Ratel at Monza on Saturday. “They have seen in NASCAR that you need exciting racing and a show. GT racing is in essence different to that. You have front engine, rear engine, mid engine. You imagine that you have in GT six cylinder, 8, 10 and 12 cylinder engines. The FIA, I have to say President Mosley, it was his view and he got it right. We were looking for two years at this and now we have the black box, which everyone is running.” The box monitors key elements from the revs to the acceleration and cornering speed and is used to accurately judge performance. “The Maserati has a smaller wing, the Lamborghini a bigger wing and restrictor. The 550 is equivalent to the Maserati, the Corvette is going to be competitive, the Aston Martin very competitive, and we are going to have a very disputed championship.”

The evidence on Sunday bore out Ratel’s rhetoric, but he has more to think about than just close racing. “There were always two problems with GT racing,” he said. “The first was to balance the performance, the second was to give the manufacturers what they require, and they require a more global exposure. America is a very important market, as is Asia and Australia because although these manufacturers sell a small number of cars, they sell them internationally.”

Ratel’s idea is to take the GT1 cars around the world with manufacturer support for the customer teams, and leave the GT2 cars in Europe to contest their own, cheaper series for the gentlemen drivers. The two would link at the most prestigious races in Britain (Silverstone), France (Magny Cours), Germany (the Nurburgring) and Italy (Monza), as well as the Spa 24-hours in Belgium. It is an ambitious plan, with races mooted in Australia, the US, Japan and Asia, and can only succeed with significant financial backing, and that is no easy thing.

If he relies on the manufacturers, he will hit problems. Maserati is a loss-making manufacturer, re-aligned with the Fiat Group after a partnership with Ferrari. Aston Martin is unlikely to help such a programme having looked to Prodrive and shipping magnate Frederic Dor to help finance the DBR9 programme. The Lamborghini programme was undertaken by Hans Reiter, the German starting the whole thing off, before looking for support from Lamborghini, and then parent company Audi. The Saleen and Lister programmes are privately-funded manufacturers, so Ratel must look elsewhere.

“I won’t do a world championship with just two races outside Europe,” he said, a barely-concealed dig at the WTCC. “I want to have a World Championship with races in Australia, America, Russia, Asia and Japan. I want to have a championship which is totally global. The grid of GT is appealing globally and I have contact in the four corners of the world. The overall win is very appealing but to do that, you need the support of the manufacturers to help in the process and to generate teams. It cannot be a European series going global. The idea is to generate national, teams. I am pushing to have a team in Bahrain, in Dubai, in Australia and so on. If we go to Australia, we need to have an Australian car coming to Spa with a top Australian line-up because we will make this championship successful on a global basis if we have national interest in the series.

“We are able to generate enough money to help with the travel. When we started with the BPR series, we had 500 kilos and about four plane tickets per car. Now, we have the car, two tonnes of spares, ten plane tickets per car. It is a considerable help. I agree, the more global I go, the more teams from Europe I will lose and I need to replace them.

“It is a vision, and I don’t know if it will happen in 2006, 2007 or what. The unification of the rules with the ACO was essential. Now, obviously, I need to convince four manufacturers, which is the FIA rule for a World Championship, so I will work on one, then another, then another.”

Can he make it work? He built this series from dark days, featuring Lister Storms and Dodge Vipers, into this, using some of his own money to bring Ferrari. That was a task many thought beyond him, and he proved them wrong.

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