Analysis

Belgian GT Championship MVD 2008 preview

© Planetlemans - Gerlach Delissen

With less than four weeks to go, the new Belcar season will kick-off at Zolder Circuit on the 12th and 13th April. The teams have been preparing and testing for an entire winter and are eager to get back on track again, for the first race. Planetlemans will give you a short update before the season gets started.

A short review of last years’ season tells us that the new organisation, SRO Belgium, succeeded in lifting up the Belcar Championship to a high international level. This is one of the main reasons that the championship name “Belcar” has been turned in to “Belgian GT Championship Mediagroup Van Dyck”.

This year’s championship will have seven events, with three different race formats. For most of the events, the format of racing will be changed from a 125 minutes race into two rounds of 60 minutes. This scheme suits perfect into the GT3 philosophy. In this format, each driver has to take part in the qualifying session and during the one-hour long race, there will be a compulsory driver change between the 23rd and 37th minute of the race. During this compulsory pit stop it’s not allowed to change tires or refuel the car. There will be a total of four of these events. Two races will have the FIA-GT format, 120 minutes of racing with two compulsory driver changes. The one-off will be of course the 24 hour race of Zolder, which will also be the highlight of the season.

Next to the format there are no further changes in this year’s championship. Due to the success of 2007, the organisation and teams reviewed the season and were very satisfied about the way things had been organized. Of course there were slight problems, but those could all be solved with minor adjustments.

© Planetlemans - Gerlach Delissen

From the regulation changes we’ll take a quick view onto the grid. As we check the top GT3 class we see a strong list of highly varied cars, such as four Mosler-Chevrolet MT900s, four Lamborghini Gallardo’s, two Ferrari 430s, four well known Dodge Viper’s, Racing For Belgium’s Aston Martin and last but not least a full load of Porsche 997s, with even one 997 GT3! This is a very promising line-up for the season’s first race.

One of the missing cars in the aforementioned line-up is the PK Carsport Corvette Z06R GT3. PK Carsport won’t be participating in the Belgian GT Championship this year as they will fully focus on the FIA-GT championship. Anthony Kumpen and Bert Longin had to look for a new team to compete in the Belgian GT Championship so this year they will be on the grid with one of the Gravity International Racing Moslers with their second Mosler going to Vincent Radermecker and a yet to be confirmed second driver.

In the second division we will of course see the Porsche 996 supercups, but for this division there will also be some new cars on the grid, for example KS Motorsport who will enter two original brand new Ginetta G50s. One Aston Martin Vantage GT4 and a possible Lotus entry are among the newcomers as well.

All these cars will turn the Belgian GT into a very competitive and attractive championship in 2008. We are really looking forward to the first meeting and can’t wait to see all the action on the track.

Event schedule;

27 March: Circuit Zolder*

12-13 April : Circuit Zolder**
10-11 May : Dijon**
31 May - 1 June : Circuit Zolder***
11-12 July : Spa-Francorchamps**
30-31 August: 24 Hours of Zolder
20-21 September: Spa-Francorchamps***
18-19 October: Circuit Zolder**

* Test Day

** 2 x 60′ races
***120′ races