Other Series

Mosler excluded from British GT!

© Planetlemans – Marcel ten Caat

In response to a series of protests from David and Godfrey Jones and their Preci Spark Ascari team, managed by Mike Jordan, the MSA’s National Court has ruled that the Mosler MT900 GT3 is no longer eligible to race in the GT3 Class of the British GT Championship.

In addition, results and points scored by Mosler drivers Dan Brown and Martin Short, including and post Snetterton (the time of the final Jones protest), have been wiped from the record, so Rollcentre’s Dan Brown is no longer in contention for the British GT3 title (until this ruling he had scored 60 points, just nine behind the Preci Spark drivers).

Henceforth, unless the British GT Regulations are re written, Mosler GT3’s can only race in the Invitation Class of the Championship. This option is currently unworkable for Martin Short and his Rollcentre team.

The National Court’s findings include this sentence: “It is, however, the view of this court that the problems and the difficulties, especially for the Mosler, would seem to have been caused in large part by the actions of SRO in apparently knowingly permitting the Mosler to compete in a Class for which it was patently ineligible.”

Moslers were entitled to compete in the Belgian GT Championship because a National GT3 Class was specifically included in that country’s series, but no such class was ever specifically written into British GTs where, in the Court’s words, “the Mosler was permitted by SRO to run within the Homologated GT3 Class”.

Without FIA Homologation, it follows, according to the National Court decision that the Mosler cannot compete in the GT3 Class, despite the go-ahead from SRO that it could. The problem is that SRO neglected to formally add the words ‘and National’ to the Rule “FIA and National GT3 Cars are eligible within the Championship Regulations” (although other sentences allowing the SRO to accept any car within British GT existed).

This indicates a conflict between the SRO and the overall management of the British GT Series, the MSA. SRO had given written and verbal affirmation that National GT3 cars were eligible, in fact , re-inforcing this well established policy, accepted the Mosler entry both before the season began, and at each subsequent race event. Rollcentre is hopeful that SRO and the MSA will come together and recognise the omission of the words ‘and National’ was indeed a technical oversight that they can immediately correct, and not a matter of ongoing policy.

Meanwhile, the issue over those two inadvertently omitted words (and National) in the formal regulations have proved costly for the SRO, the Championship, Rollcentre Racing and Mosler Europe and most importantly and tragically, Dan Brown.

Ironically, the Jones brothers are racing a car with a current performance advantage due to another technicality. The Ascari was originally only entitled to run in FIA GT3 several years ago because there were relatively few marques available in the European Championship’s first year and without any Ascari entries in Europe this year, the Ascari couldn’t be ‘performance equalised’ for FIA GT3, the result of which has been that all Balance of Performance measures accrued for the Ascari over the last 3 years have been dismissed. Consequently, the Preci Spark entry has been running without last year’s 80 kg of ballast, and without the higher 20mm ride height Equalisation measure.

Martin Short: ” We took part in the British GT this year to compete in the GT3 class against other high performance and competitive race teams for the National British GT Title, something the Invitation class does not offer. The fact that this unfortunate, semantic incongruity has now befallen us, with three quarters of the Championship gone by, and with the best young driver in BGT since Jonny Cocker taken out of the title running simply beggars belief.

”Hopefully, the British GT Championship will return to a better state next year. In the meantime, we will run where we are welcomed.

“As a postscript, I find it incredible that the MSA approves the regulations, and then decides they are wrong. Moslers were running under these specific regulations three years ago.”

(Announcement from Mosler Europe MD Martin Short)