GT1 World

Stephane Ratel and Jean Todt on GT racing

© DPPI

During the FIA GT1 World Championship round at the Nürburgring a press conference was held with SRO Chairman Stephane Ratel, FIA President Jean Todt and ADAC Sports President Hermann Tomczyk. An ideal place to follow up on the press conference held last month at Spa-Francorchamps.

Heading into the final part of the 2010 season teams, drivers, manufacturers, organisers and media are already starting to look ahead to the season ahead. So could Stephane Ratel already give more information on new venues and teams?

“We are an FIA World Championship, we have to cover the world as much as possible. We’re in discussions with many promoters, we want to be the championship for luxury and sport brands, so we need to go to the important markets for that, the United States, China and eventually Russia. We’re working actively on these markets but don’t know if we will have them signed for 2011 or 2012, but we are relatively optimistic that we will have more races overseas next season,” was the answer.

Last month at Spa-Francorchamps SRO announced the cancellation of the Durban round and confirmed its intention on holding a replacement round at the new Navarra circuit in Spain. Is this race confirmed yet? “No, it has not been confirmed, but it is likely to be confirmed soon,” said Ratel.

At Spa-Francorchamps Stephane Ratel announced (plans for) a new series, combining GT2, GT3 and GT4. One month after these plans were published is there any confirmed interest from manufacturers already? “We didn’t announce, we proposed. We always progress in the same way, we propose something, and then we see the reaction from the floor, the team and the stake holders and then we decide to push forward or not. The problem we have now is before I think we all agree that the future for GT2 with FIA should be hybrid technologies. For the moment it will take a number of years before this is really effective. So we are discussing at the moment that there might be room for a long distance championship but with GT2 it seems a bit difficult at the moment because there isn’t an active GT2 category at the moment. So we will continue working on it and we will let you know”

The American Le Mans Series, Intercontinental Cup and the ADAC GT Masters provisional calendars are already known and we know teams are asking for calendars so they can prepare their 2011 season and budgets as soon as possible. So could Ratel already say anything on 2011? “Not yet, our provisional calendar will be ready when the FIA World Motor Sport Council meets in October. That is the moment you will know. But we’re not actively researching for new teams and want to build our series with our current teams.”

So a few weeks remain before the world will know the FIA GT calendars. But could Ratel say anything about how to avoid clashes with other sportscar and GT events so that teams can do more than one series and media will be able to fully focus on a series. “It is impossible to avoid clashes. With our series and the national championships it is already a difficult puzzle and it takes a lot of time to get the calendar out. As for the other series, there will be no clash with the top events like Le Mans and Sebring for now but we can not avoid clashes with other series. What we will try to avoid though is clashes with other FIA events in the region. Unfortunately it was impossible this weekend with Formula 1 at Spa. We had planned this race a week earlier, but the WRC meant there were not enough officials and marshals available.”

With Jean Todt also at the Nürburgring for the entire weekend (and visiting an FIA GT1 World Championship event for the first time) it was of course a great opportunity to ask him what he thought of the championship and the Nürburgring race.

“I am definitely delighted to be here in the Nürburgring. The weather conditions make the race a lot more attractive, and more unpredictable. Since yesterday we’ve been able to see that the day starts off dry and then it rains; we saw that in the GT3’s second race. There is a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of action, a lot of competition and a lot of good spirit, and I must say that it’s a big tribute to what Stephane Ratel has done over the years to prepare this international FIA GT1 Championship. All of the national races here and I must say that Hermann Tomczyk, with the ADAC, is doing a great job and a great achievement. I think that there are nine manufacturers there, which makes very close competition and of course we could see all the race with the change of condition. And you know when something is new you need to put a lot of effort into it, we cannot expect the tribunes to be full of spectators, but we do need to aim for that; it is what we need to achieve. We have a product, there are people, competitors, organisers, promoters and I think the regulations are made in a way that allows to have cars very close to each other. Now we need to make the world aware of this championship.”

Earlier this year, the ACO announced the Intercontinental Cup which goes around the world. Is that a world championship in all but name and does that conflict with this championship and would you be happy to give them the world title if they ask?

“I think that we are very mean by distributing the FIA world championship event, at the moment we have the Formula One, WRC, GT1 and the Touring Cars. I think that each championship has the potential of development,” said Jean Todt. “Concerning other categories, the FIA could have some interest. And endurance could be an interesting direction, and over the next years we will see what is happening. You cannot avoid other organisers deciding to have their own international series, and it is happening in a lot of categories, in single seaters, in touring cars, GT endurance, and I will say that it is free competition. But to allow the FIA World Championship label, we will be very restrictive.”

To finish it Stephane Ratel also confirmed again that teams doing all rounds of the 2010 FIA GT1 World Championship will get 10.000 per entered car per overseas round at the end of the season and that he expects all teams to make the trip, perhaps without the Phoenix Racing Carsport team – being ineligible for points and money after not entering their second car. One team manager already reported to Planetlemans that he was happy with the overseas races as they mean the team has less costs on transportation as they are (partly) paid by the organisers and it was cheaper to put equipment in a container in a port than to drive the trucks around Europe.