The 2016 British GT Championship was launched today at Media Day at Snetterton. Both Benjamin Franassovice, Championship Manager, and Stephane Ratel, SRO Motorsport Group Founder and CEO spoke about their satisfaction at the way the series has developed.
“Entry wise we’ve progressed quantities there,” said Franassovice. “The diversity is also there. We have some new machinery joining us in both classes. We‘re very excited. We have the Lamborghini returning to us with Barwell. We also have the Bentley GT3 car joining us with Team Parker. We have the return of Audi with Optimum Racing [and we’re] very happy about that and McLaren with Black Bull Ecurie Ecosse. We will have 15 to 16 cars in GT3.”
Franassovice continued: “In GT4 more new models are arriving. We have Ebor with the Maserati which sounds great out there. We have Porsche coming in with the Cayman. We have, just announced today, the McLaren GT4 which is extremely nice so we’re very excited to have this car in British GT and be the first [series] to race it. Overall we are looking good and we can’t wait for the first event at Brands Hatch.”
Stephane Ratel also expressed how pleased he was at the healthy 2016 grid: “Things are going quite well in British GT at the moment really thanks to Benjamin and the SRO team who are really doing a fantastic job. I think the British GT Championship is an amazing example of stability and success.
“We’ve been promoting it for many years and apart from a little dive for two or three years when the economy was in trouble it’s recovered and as is a very good series which has strong principles. The first one is that it’s a Pro-Am series where really a non-professional driver really has a chance to win and usually wins and I think that is the number one characteristic of this series.”
Ratel explained why GT4 grids are also increasing. “The British GT series has helped develop the GT4 category more than any other series in Europe and I think the presence of the McLaren’s new GT4 cars, which we believe will be followed by other manufacturers which are now looking at the GT4 categories, shows that we were on the right way and we were very happy. We see in Europe that a number of GT3 championships do suffer because it is maybe becoming more and more of an international category. So GT4 is the perfect second division and we are very happy with the success it has in the UK.”
The first round of the British GT Championship will be held at Brands Hatch on the 17th of April.