FIA GT Championship - History

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 One experience.

Following the 2009 season, the SRO announced that the FIA GT Championship's two categories, GT1 and GT2, would break-off into separate series. The GT1 category became a World Championship with rounds across the world. Cars which fit the GT1 class were be eligible to race only in the FIA GT1 World Championship, as the ACO (organizer of the Le Mans 24 Hours banned the cars from the event and all of its associated series. This meant that the category that once was eglible to race not only in the FIA GT, Le Mans Series and numerous national championships, was now only able to run in the new World Championship.

The GT1 cars continued to race in the World Championship in 2010 and 2011, but in 2012 the series switched exclusively to GT3 machinery due to shrinking car counts and the fact that most of the cars were ageing and no-one was willing to build new models. This meant that the San Luis round of the 2011 season was the last ever time GT1 cars contested in international motorsport. The 2012 FIA GT1 season was contested with GT3 cars (yet retaining GT1 in series' title), but the series was finally cancelled after the year had concluded.

In 2010 the GT2 class was planned to have a separate championship having rounds held only in Europe, known as the FIA GT2 European Championship, but this series was cancelled. A lone GT2 event was held in 2010 at the Spa 24 Hours with the winners being awarded the FIA GT2 European Cup. This was the last ever time GT2-spec cars contested in SRO-sanctioned series.

A new Blancpain Endurance Series was announced for 2011 which will re-establish some of the endurance format of the former FIA GT Championship, although this series will only utilize the FIA's GT3, GT4, and Supersports categories (GT2 was also planned to be in the series, but this was quickly folded as the interest level wasn't high). However, this series will not be an FIA sanctioned championship. In 2012 the series abandoned the GT4 class and moved to GT3 exclusively.