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The new GT Endurance Series in detail!
© Planetlemans – Marcel ten Caat
SRO Motorsports Group revealed details of its newly planned GT Endurance Series in an mail to teams and manufacturers last week. The series, to be launched in 2011, will not replace any of the GT3 series already promoted by SRO, but as Stephane Ratel said before, will be a new endurance series for teams that want to run their cars in races longer than the current one-hour sprint races.
SRO made it clear that the new GT Endurance Series will be an international series with FIA approval rather than an FIA Championship. It will be promoted by SRO, but presented by the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium. The blue riband event of the series will be the 24 Hours of Spa, with four three-hour races completing the new series.
The series is to kick off its inaugural season at Monza on April 17. The second round should be taking place at the Hungaroring at the end of may, even though it is yet to be confirmed. After the 24 Hours of Spa, round three of the series, the teams will then go to either Nürburgring or Magny-Cours at the end of August or first weekend of September. The season finale will be held at the Silverstone circuit on October 9.
- 17th April: Monza
- 22nd or 29th May: Budapest (TBC)
- 30th July: 24 Hours of Spa
- 28th August or 4th September: Nürburgring or Magny Cours
- 9th October: Silverstone
Each weekend will have two one-hour long free practice sessions, three qualifying sessions of 15 minutes each, one for each of the three drivers and then one three-hour race. During this race there will be two mandatory pit stops with tyre and driver change. All cars must have three drivers for each race.
Customer tyres, either registered by the FIA for the FIA GT3 European Championship or coming from a single tyre supplier in GT3 national series are allowed.
The series will follow the FIA-style point scale. 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 in each of its categories. At the 24 Hours of Spa there will be double points, with one quarter at six hours, one quarter at 12 hours and half after 24 hours.
As was expected the GT Endurance series will not be open to GT2 cars. Only GT3 and GT4 homologated cars will be allowed in the series and at the 24 Hours of Spa, all cars have to conform with the latest FIA homologation forms. In the two classes a total of five categories will be accepted.
1) GT3 Pro Cup
- Three drivers at all races, including the 24 Hours of Spa. No driver categorisation.
- GT3 cars in the latest FIA Homologation Specs and FIA Balance of Performance only.
2) GT3 Pro-Am Cup
- Three drivers at the three-hour races and four for the 24 Hours of Spa. For this category there will be two options for driver categorisation: Platinum or Gold/Bronze/Bronze with the addition of an extra Platinum or Gold driver at Spa and Silver/Silver/Bronze and the addition of an extra Silver driver
- GT3 cars in the latest FIA Homologation Specs and FIA Balance of Performance only.
3) GT3 Citation Cup
- Three drivers at the three-hour races and four for the 24 Hours of Spa. The driver categorisation will be: Silver/Bronze/Bronze and another Silver driver for Spa.
- GT3 cars with older specifications and Models will be allowed in this class.
4) GT4 Cup
- Three drivers at the three-hour races and four for the 24 Hours of Spa. The driver categorisation for the GT4 Cup will be Platinum or Gold/Bronze/Bronze and for Spa the addition of an extra Platinum or Gold driver or Silver/Silver/Bronze and the addition of an extra Silver driver. -
GT4 cars in the latest SRO Homologation Specs and SRO Balance of Performance are accepted.
5) Supersport Cup
- Three drivers at the three-hour races. The driver categorisation will be Silver/Bronze/Bronze.
- Supersport cars in the latest SRO Homologation Specs and SRO Balance of Performance are accepted.
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Come on, 3 hours isn’t endurance, it’s middle distance!!!
Now lest’s all pray that the ACO doesn’t add a GT3 / GTc class to the Euro LMS.
I’d prefer ACO to drop gt1 in favor of gt3/gtc. But that’s just me.
Why no GT2? And why 3 GT3 classes? And, @NaBUru38, your totally right, 3 hours isn’t really long enough, should be 4 hours with maybe one 6 hour as-well as the 24.
3 hours was actually the standard race distance back when FIA GT was still a respected championship, yet they didn’t really market themselves as endurance series! However, this doesn’t look that bad, apart from the fact that GT2 is stupidly ignored and lame balance performance is likely to continue.
Not for me thanks Ratel, you are making the whole series more and more complicated. Since GT1 became sprint races I permanently looked towards the LMS, GT racing ain’t sprint and 3 hours dosent equal endurance but hey, maybe that’s just me!
Seriously? I was actually looking forward to the idea of an endurance series including GT3 and GT4 cars, but…this looks more rushed than the 2010 ILMC. The split in the main classes is just a little too complicated for me and I don’t know if there is enough variety between those two classes alone. The Spa 24hr was an interesting race, but it lacked something.
I hope it works out, but with everything the SRO is doing, add in the ACO and GARRA, among others, sports car racing is looking just about as diluted as open-wheel a few years back.
Wow this really adds to the mess! How wil average Joe ever understand GT racing.
Why not GT2? Without factory backing impossible. It’s the return of the old FIA GT, but with GT3 and GT4 instead of GT1 and GT2. Too short?? Many ALMS-races are shorter and in Europe, it’s the gap in the market between sprintraces and LMS/VLN and so on. Some guys say GT-races shouldn’t be sprintraces and now they disapprove this formula??? I believe in it, just as i’ve always believed in the WC GT1. Ratel has always been the guy with the new ideas. ACO isn’t listening anymore to him and they are going to pay the price for it. I don’t believe anymore in the future of GT2. Surprise guys, the ACO will also have different categories between GT2. One big difference, GT3 is and stays a lot cheaper….
This should be GT1!! Choose ten global locations, have the 24 GT1 cars all of them, do a one hour qualifying race and a feature race of varying length. Spa can be the Blue-Reband, and we could bring the six hours of Suzuka back to its former greatness.
But this sounds ok as well. And “Ok” is about all i can expect from the ACO at the moment…
3 hours is endurance?
Where is the TV coverage?
Ah, the usual rantings about race distances.
TV Coverage will be at FIA GT3 dot com obviously, maybe on Bloomberg and maybe on ESPN or Motors TV. Not that hard to understand SRO already has links to all those.
I don’t have a problem with 3 hours events, its only 15 mins longer than typical ALMS races.
I just wonder what Super Sport is? Has Ratel been reading Speed King and Mine rants about how SRO should look to the Grand Am Cup for ideas? Which has 50-60 cars every EVENT? I hope its still not those track day cars like the X-Bow.
So the FIA GT3 series is morphing into this but the national championships will stay the same? Interesting…
3 hrs isn’t that long but the reason behind it is for tv coverage 6hrs does not bode well for tv unless its a major race. Endurance racing isn’t the cash cow it used to be on tv with lenghty races.
Yes, the Supersports are “those track day cars like the X-Bow”
@Anthony
What’s wrong with the trackday cars. Their kinda like LMPs, and they add a bit of variety.
They are only popular with Europeans. I understand that these are sold mostly to Europeans, as there are few Atoms in the States. This is to be a European series so I guess that’s fine but they would have higher car counts with a hot hatch class like I and Speed King have being talking about for years it seems.
My only real problem with them is low car count. The GT4/Super Sport series was never shown on TV because of its low car count in 2010. By putting it together with GT3 cars in this endurance format makes much more sense.