[FIA GT] why did the FIA kill the GT1 class in FIA GT?

[CVT]

just wondering...

[JustinDawkins]

Ayse or someone will have a detailed answer, but I believe it was due to cost, i.e. of running one and building one ment it was too expensive to last very long.

[pink69]

The Fia didn't kill GT1, the manufacturers did a good enough job all buy themselves! The fact Mercedes won every round of the 98 GT championship meant everyone else went, Porsche weren't too happy about not winning anything, altho they did win Le Mans that year.

[Es Nes]

yup, the manufacters turned road cars in prototypes. the gt-one for example replaced the lugage with a fuel cuel in the race car and called the fuel lugage iirc.

[egor]

But did'nt the manufacturers just build the race car to the limit of the rules set by the FIA, so meaning if you wanted to stand a chance of winning you had to spend a lot of money.

The like's of Mercedes, Toyota etc designed and built a race car first and then built one road car as per the rules.

[racer69]

It died because only Mercedes was willing to run cars in a championship. Toyota, Nissan and Audi had GT1-type cars for Le Mans, but weren't willing to run them anywhere else. Porsche pulled out, Panoz switched to an LMP, and BMW had forsaken the Mclaren a year earlier to go for an LMP. It just ran out of interest unfortunatly, as i was always more of a fan of those cars than the open-top prototypes.

[Aysedasi]

Me too racer. I regard the period of the McLaren, Merc, Nissan, Porsche and Toyota GT1s as the most interesting I have ever watched. Certainly watching these cars at Le Mans gave me the biggest buzz since the Bernie and Jean-Marie destroyed Group C. Fantastic cars. Just a huge shame that, inevitably, the whole thing fizzled out with the Mercedes domination. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the GT-One or the R390 had won Le Mans.......

[KA]

Originally posted by egor


The like's of Mercedes, Toyota etc designed and built a race car first and then built one road car as per the rules.

That was pretty much the fatal flaw in the rules, which led to the rapid progression from GT1 cars based on genuine road cars like the F40 or McLaren to the likes of the CLK-GTR or Toyota- it did bring about some amazing cars though

[Aysedasi]

Still some of my favourites, the McLaren F1 and the Toyota GT-One in particular. I also thought that the Nissan R390 was a very sweet looking car.......

[veeten]

well, considering that the last chance for this was '99, when the Toyota GT-One was leading going into the last hour only to have the left rear tire go away, handing the win to BMW. It was the "swan song" for this class, even with the Bentley GTP that arrived some three years later.

It was the morphing under the rules structure that caused the events of '97-'00, ultimately bringing about the demise of GT-1. Sportscars that were previously under that classification were spared the downfall by being moved up and later being redesignated as GTS, one of the smarter moves done by all parties to be sure.

[Aysedasi]

Yes, but you can't even begin to compare any of the current crop of GTS cars to the GT1s - IMO.

[veeten]

True, but the numbers of entrants at present doesn't lie.

Also, one had to consider the amount of materials, man-hours, and money that it took to put one of those racecars on the track. Reasons as to why that the majority of them were either with well-off established teams, or factory-backed efforts. Great performance, but costly in running them.

[Aysedasi]

Numbers mean relatively little to me. I watched a great battle between 6 cars from Peugeot and Toyota in 1992 when the rest of the field was, frankly, pathetic. I'd rather watch half a dozen corking GT1s......

[gttouring]

but mercedes domination killled the GT1? will Audi LMP domination kill LMP's?
not likely GT1 died off for reasons like the bizarre Toyota GtOne which was more LMGTP than a true road car, regardless of homolgation, I think the cost became outrageous and it made no sense, especially when an equally funded LMP program could develop Prototypes without the need for a 'road car' so initial development was probably less- or i might not know what i am tlking about- i need coffee

[Aysedasi]

No, it all sounds reasonable. I think the reality is that the Audi domination has actually come very close to killing LMP, as it happens. Its certainly killed off a great deal of interest.

[Smokey 6 litre]

i would love to see a return of those style of cars, Toyota GT1, Nissan R390 GT1 and McLaren F1, hmmmmm.
Do you think with the new Le Mans rules we could have a come back (i mean of similar cars, not those ones)

[jhansen]

Sports car racing is my favorite form of motorsport. In particular, I have always loved the prototypes, such as Group C and the LMP class of today. The GT1 cars were also magnificent machines, which I also adored. However, my one dislike of sports car racing is the politics and inconsistency of it all. So many classes have come and gone, so many different sets of rules, so many special interests.

I wanted to comment on the Audi domination. Hasn’t there always been a period of domination by one team or make? It is quite easy to see that a manufacture such as Audi can come along and dominate this sport like they have. What other manufacturer has spent the money they have in the last four years like they have? I suppose Bentley did, but there is some relation there with Audi. Audi also did not have a factory team this year. So if Audi was the only one spending money, and Bentley the only one this year, it is obvious to see the results they did. The question I ask is why do manufacturers choose say Formula 1 or WRC instead of sports cars?

[Woolley]

I'll tell you a little story.

Some years ago I was flagging the entrance to the pit lane for the ITC meeting at Silverstone in the last week-end of August.

By the end of the week-end, I'd learned the following.
The ITC was too succesful and not entirely run by FIA. It was considered a threat.
If one manufacturer left, it wouldn't be worth running.
Mercedes has built a GT1 car, but it wasn't legal under the current regs.
Whatever it was, if they presented it to FIA, then it would be allowed to run, but only if Mercedes withdrew from ITC.

3 weeks later, it was announced that Mercedes were commencing the design and build of a GT1.

Go figure...

[racer69]

But didn't Alfa and Opel withdraw in tandem from the ITC, incurring huge fines from the FIA by doing so, leaving only Mercedes?

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by jhansen
The question I ask is why do manufacturers choose say Formula 1 or WRC instead of sports cars?

Its a question I've asked myself often particularly in relation to F1 (with the domination we've had by 2-3 teams for donkey's years).

[egor]

I think you cannot put the WRC in the same frame as Formula 1, atleast you can see a raod car in a WRC car, and look what it has done for Subaru. 10 or so years ago they were just used by farmers as a cheap vehicle's instead of a Landrover's and now they are one of the top performance road car's you can buy for not bad money.

[the_fury]

Yeah, well that's were Sportscars are at a disadvantage – you can buy a Subaru which looks a lot like a WRC car for £20k, but Ferraris, Pagani's etc aren't cheap.

And if they race 'ordinary' cars like BMW 3 series Ayse gets all upset!

[Aysedasi]

Yup!

(I'm toying with asking Craig to add the words "BMW" and "M3" to the 10/10ths autocensor........ )

[veeten]

BMW M3! ( tease, tease... )

[Aysedasi]

Watch it...........