FIA GT Championship

FIA GT’s Stephane Ratel about the 2005 season — freedom to have independent races

With over 200 journalists, photographers and members of TV crews in attendance, the 2005 seasons of the FIA World Touring Car Championship and the FIA GT Championship were launched in Monza on Tuesday March 22nd. Stephane Ratel, chairman of SRO, promoter of the FIA GT Championship, gave a speech during the press conference.

© Francois Flamand

Stephane: “During the winter, there were a lot of rumours that the FIA GT Championship would suffer due to the touring cars becoming a World Championship. We do not think so, because all the things that are important for the FIA GT Championship have been preserved. We will be with the touring cars on six major European events. We have kept our race format, we have preserved the schedule of the meeting. We have the same garage distribution as before.

We still benefit from a world class TV production directed by Eurosport and we keep our broadcasting on Eurosport, reinforced by live coverage on Eurosport 2 and a presence on Sport Italia. For us, the touring cars becoming a World Championship is good news. It reinforces promotion; it reinforces the TV distribution. It will bring more spectators to the circuits, which has been our main objective since we started the Super Racing Weekend. I think that with the combination of GT and touring cars, and with the World Touring Car Championship, we will certainly have more public, and GT racing will bene’t from this. We have also kept our freedom.

We have the freedom to have independent races, in our key markets. It was very important for us to remain in the Czech Republic. We have many teams and drivers coming from Eastern Europe: Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic. We have the freedom to expand worldwide. The FIA GT Championship is a kind of world championship without the title. After going to Dubai and Zhuhai last year, we will go back to those two destinations this year and we will add a race in Bahrain. We have the freedom to have a strong presence in the paddock, with a very exciting collaboration with our GT game producer, GTR, with a game park that I am sure you will all enjoy, and which will bring a lot of life to the paddock. The Championship itself is looking very exciting for this season. There is no doubt that the FIA GT Championship is becoming more and more professional. There are very few gentlemen drivers left, and all the teams are very competitive.

The grid we are presenting is the result of six years during which we convinced GT manufacturers, one after the other, to go into racing. It is also the result of common regulations between the FIA and the ACO. Our GT cars can be raced in America, at Sebring, in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in the FIA GT Championship and in the Proximus 24 Hours of Spa. This has encouraged many manufacturers to build cars. We can always talk of the greatest times of the “fties, sixties and seventies, but never in history did we have on the same grid, as we will during the Tourist Trophy at Silverstone, for the centenary of the Royal Automobile Club of Great Britain when Aston Martin will enter two of?cial cars - a total of eight manufacturers represented. There will be seven in GT1. Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Lister, Saleen and Porsche in the smaller class.

If I have one negative point to make, it is that Porsche does not have any competition in the GT2 class. We will have some Ferrari Modena cars on a race-by-race basis. We will also have a number of race-by-race competitors coming to many events. We will start here in Monza with a grid of between 28 to 30 cars, so I think it will be a very exciting show.

At Istanbul, we will introduce for the “rst time a two-hour format, which offer more exciting racing and a format suitable for TV. We will experience it, and we will see for the future. It will depend mainly on the interest of the manufacturers themselves - are they ready to come more behind the FIA GT Championship, to help us move overseas for more events? We have interest from America, we have interest from Australia, from Japan. The Championship could become in 2006 and 2007 a real world Championship with only a few races in Europe.”