25 Feb 2010
Stephane Ratel, CEO of SRO - the organisers of the FIA GT1 World Championship, explains why 2010 is such an important year for the series following its promotion to sit alongside F1, World Rally Championship and World Touring Car Championship as a fully FIA sanctioned World Championship.
I am very passionate about the new FIA GT1 World Championship and I truly believe sports car racing has the potential to become hugely popular right around the globe. The championship will feature some of the most iconic automotive marques including Aston Martin, Corvette, Ford, Lamborghini, Maserati, and Nissan. Together they have created some of the best looking and best sounding cars in the world.
My ambition for the new FIA GT1 World Championship is huge, but we can draw upon SRO’s 15-year heritage of promoting sports car championships around the world. We are able to build from the strong foundations we have set.
I feel we are now ready to showcase the pinnacle of sports car racing in a single world championship, and become one of the ‘big four’ international motorsport series recognised by the FIA. It will be ground-breaking, truly global, prestigious, and technically innovative.
It was hard work to secure 10 events on three continents and a 24-car grid with 12 teams to ensure the FIA granted us approval for GT1 to become a fully fledged World Championship.
But we secured the manufacturers, the teams and now we have a great calendar that will visit four continents, and race at some of the of the world’s most legendary and iconic circuits including Spa-Francorchamps, Interlagos, Silverstone, and the Nurburgring
In fact we get underway on 17th April at the incredible futuristic Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, which hosted the final F1 race of last season.
We have shaped the new FIA GT1 World Championship with the aim of making it far more fan and media friendly. The FIA GT1 World Championship will run one-hour races, with 12 independent teams each entering two cars, with the six manufacturers each supplying two teams.
Only Formula One has achieved this simple two-car team set-up in a world motorsport series before. We also balance the performance of the cars to make the racing as close as possible.
It is a very natural evolution, there is a world championship for single-seaters, one for rally cars, one for saloon cars, and now we have one for the super sports cars, these are the cars that really get the blood racing and they in turn have racing in their DNA.
It is not enough though to just meet the criteria and call ourselves a world championship. It was equally important for us to grow our business, to let us be and act like a world championship from day one. It has taken investment in creating a brand identity, in marketing services and in sponsorship and television and our soon to launch online destination.
We have worked hard, but I believe that we now have all the ingredients ready. And of course we have the cars that people dream of.
The official launch of the 2010 FIA GT1 World Championship takes place in Paris on 1st March, with the first race at the Yas Marina Abu Dhabi on Saturday 17th April.
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