The GT1 World Championship review

The FIA GT1 World Championship had it all in 2011: superb racing; high drama and intrigue; and a five-way fight for the drivers' title at the season finale on the other side of the world. So not much changed from the inaugural season, then. And that included a championship victory for the best team with the best car.

The JR Group, which had previously run two Nissans under the Sumo Power banner, stepped up to run four of the Japanese machines in 2011, two as Sumo and two as JR Motorsports. A series of performance breaks and hard work by the team - plus Nissan competition department NISMO - over the winter turned the GT-R from a car that could win races on occasion into one that could take victory every weekend.

The top 10 GT1 World Championship drivers in focus

1. Michael Krumm/Lucas Luhr (JRM Nissan)
Points: 137
Wins: 4
Other podiums: 5
Poles: 1 (Luhr, 1; Krumm, 0)
Fastest laps: 3 (Krumm, 2; Luhr, 1)

Nissan stalwart Michael Krumm and new signing Lucas Luhr provided a textbook demonstration of how to win a championship. They scored more victories than their immediate rivals (and crucially more victories in the full-points 'championship' races than anyone else), made the finish in all but one of the races and never left a track without troubling the scorers.

Consistency was key, not only over the course of the season, but also over the duration of each of the hour-long races. Krumm/Luhr tended to look after their tyres better than any of their rivals. What's more, the Nissan, in particular the German-crewed GT-R, appeared less-affected by success ballast than the opposition.

The German pairing took the title despite a slow start. They may have won the championship race at round three at the Algarve in May, but their title bid didn't really kick off until a second (qualifying race) and a victory (championship race) at Silverstone in June.

By then they were well and truly on top at the JRM Nissan squad, having wrested the ascendancy from team-mates Richard Westbrook and Peter Dumbreck. There was inevitably a learning process for Luhr to go through in his first season in GT1, but perhaps most significantly team manager Nigel Stepney had taken over engineering duties for the Germans at round two and then set about moulding the #23 Nissan into the most potent machine on the grid. Witness six podiums from 12 starts over the final half-dozen races.

Krumm and Luhr claimed the title in anti-climactic style at the San Luis finale. Their nearest rivals, Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke, non-started after a crash in practice, which meant the Nissan men were able to seal the deal with second place in the qualifying race. That should not detract in any way from their season: the German duo are deserving champions.

2. Darren Turner/Stefan Mucke (Young Driver AMR Aston Martin)
Points: 120
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 6
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1 (Turner, 1; Mucke, 0)

Another season and another near-miss in the series for Turner, who this year was paired at Young Driver AMR with Mucke courtesy of a rule change allowing two factory-contracted drivers to share a car. The similarities between 2010 and 2011 will probably haunt Turner at some stage down the line. His mount, the Aston Martin DBR9, wasn't a match for its biggest rival over the full course of the season (last year the Maserati MC12, this year the Nissan GT-R); he went to the series finale in Argentina hamstrung by success ballast, and points lost on home ground at Silverstone proved all-important in the championship race.

The Aston was a less-consistent performer than the Nissan, over both a range of tracks and ballast levels, and at the one circuit when Turner and Mucke should have been making hay - Silverstone - they failed to trouble the scorers while their team-mates were right up the front.

Turner was an innocent victim in a multi-car incident in the qualifying race, and then a touch of afters from Mucke following a collision with Westbrook's Nissan not only put him out of the championship race, but almost certainly had a knock-on effect. The car's retirement from the main event next time out at Algarve with propshaft failure was believed by the team to have been a consequence of the impact after Mucke drove across the bows of the Nissan.

A second place and a victory on the penultimate weekend of the season at the Goldenport circuit in Beijing put Turner and Mucke within reasonable striking range of championship leaders Luhr and Krumm, but the success ballast that came with those results was always going to make life hard for them on the up-and-down San Luis circuit. They always regarded their chances at the Argentinian venue as slim, but that chance disappeared when Mucke hit the unyielding concrete walls in practice, putting the car out of the event.

It was all the more galling given the shambolic championship race in which Luhr and Krumm went out at the start. Anything might have been possible.

3. Andrea Piccini/Christian Hohenadel (Hexis AMR Aston Martin)
Points: 111
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

Consistency was the key to a strong season for Andrea Piccini and Christian Hohenadel. They won just once and were on the podium only twice more, but for the four race weekends leading up to the season finale they were in the points in all eight races. That put them in with what is best described as a mathematical chance of the title, but they should have been much closer - Piccini dumped his Hexis Aston out of the lead with five minutes to go in the championship race at the penultimate round at Goldenport.

Experienced GT hand Piccini and 2010 FIA GT3 European champion Hohenadel, who was racing at this level for the first time since 2002, were no match for the Young Driver Astons in qualifying, but the focus at the French team was always on the races. Hexis paid little attention to perfecting a qualifying set-up in practice and the Piccini/Hohenadel combination was always much nearer the pace when it really mattered. Time after time, the team used its pitstop prowess to propel its top pairing up the leaderboard.

Piccini's lead at Goldenport came courtesy of that pitwork, which also played a part in his and Hohenadel's only victory - in the main race at the Sachsenring. The car started from the back after Piccini shunted in qualifying, but a super-fast turnaround in the first race gained the car five places.

Fifth place in the championship race in Argentina was enough to give this pairing third spot in the drivers' championship and, combined with third in the race for team-mates Clivio Piccione and Stef Dusseldorp, this gave Hexis the teams' title. That was a major achievement for the only team on the grid that operates on anything approaching a true commercial footing.

There is money behind the team (co-owner Clement Mateu's family runs the Hexis adhesive company and collector Frederic Dor owns the cars), but there is no sugar daddy, chequebook wedged open, to fund its racing. Hexis had to find drivers with budget to get on the grid, and it did that with Hohenadel, Piccione and Dusseldorp. When it couldn't find a fourth, it brought in sometime Aston factory driver Piccini as a safe pair of hands to complete the line-up.

4. Tomas Enge/Alex Muller (Young Driver AMR Aston Martin)
Points: 103
Wins: 2
Other podiums: 6
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2 (Enge, 2; Muller, 0)

There was little to choose between the two Young Driver crews in qualifying or the races, and the reason Tomas Enge and Alex Muller were outscored by their team-mates came down to misfortune and circumstance as much as anything else. There was a wheelgun failure at Navarra, for example, and they would almost certainly have claimed victory in the championship race at Silverstone had not Mucke's attack of red mist resulted in a safety car that wiped out Enge's first-stint lead.

Enge refound his mojo this season after a difficult 2010 in which he was often outperformed by co-driver Turner. He had struggled to look after the tyres, but an aerodynamic performance break transformed the car for the Czech, giving him back the feel he had with the DBR9 when he was consistently the fastest man around Le Mans in the thing.

5. Marc Basseng/Markus Winkelhock (All-Inkl/Munnich Lamborghini)
Points: 102
Wins: 3
Other podiums: 2
Poles: 1 (Winkelhock,1; Basseng, 0)
Fastest laps: 1 (Basseng 1, Winkelhock 0)

The German All-Inkl squad made the biggest step forward of any team on the grid between seasons one and two of the championship. There were signs of promise from the team at the end of its debut sportscar season in 2010 (previous FIA GT campaigns were not with its own set-up), but it was quick from the get-go at Yas Marina in March.

The turnaround wasn't the result of a massive winter testing schedule (its Lamborghinis barely turned a wheel between last year's finale and this year's opener), rather attention to detail from the team managed by Marc Basseng. That included the preparation of the cars and also the way they were run at the track, including the all-important pitstops.

Basseng and DTM refugee Markus Winkelhock made a flying start to the series, following up on a podium in the championship race at Yas Marina with a double victory at Zolder. All-Inkl then repeated the trick at Navarra, Basseng and Winkelhock sharing out the wins with team-mates Nicky Pastorelli and Dominik Schwager.

The Lamborghini wasn't competitive at Paul Ricard, and the team's championship challenge went off the rails once the cars left for China in the container for the final three flyaway events. Basseng and Winkelhock were excluded from sixth place in the opening race at Ordos when the rear of the car was found to be too wide, and the team boss was shunted out of the main event at Goldenport by a Nissan. That meant the #38 Lambo went to Argentina with only a mathematical chance of the title.

Poor reliability also played a part in the team's failure to challenge for the crown right to the end: the Lambo's drivetrain is inherently weak, and just about every weekend each of the All-Inkl cars lost all-important track time with gearbox or clutch problems.

The team was disappointed to miss out on a top three in either the drivers' or teams' standings but, considering the squad's youth and lack of resources in comparison to the likes of JRM, it was still an impressive season.

6. Maxime Martin (Marc VDS Ford)
Points: 98
Wins: 4
Other podiums: 1
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 4

The Ford GT wasn't quite the weapon that it had been in 2010, simply because the competition had moved forward and the Matech-developed machine started the new season as it finished the last. There were times when the lead Marc VDS entry, shared by Maxime Martin and Frederic Makowiecki, was the in the ascendant; notably at Yas Marina and the glorified kart track that was Ordos in China. But there were others when it wasn't in the ballpark, most notably Silverstone and Paul Ricard.

The shortcomings that always made the Ford a difficult car in which to race - a lack of power and torque - took their toll over the course of the season, preventing a title challenge from a pairing that won four times during the season. Martin ended up sixth in the points on his own because Makowiecki missed four events when he was on duty with the Luxury Racing Ferrari team in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup.

7. Clivio Piccione/Stef Dusseldorp (Hexis AMR Aston Martin)
Points: 95
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

This was arguably the faster of the two Hexis line-ups, yet much less experienced in sportscar terms, and it showed. Clivio Piccione (who moved into sportscars for 2010) and Stef Dusseldorp (who switched from German F3 Cup for 2011) made too many mistakes to mount a serious title challenge.

That said, Piccione took a significant step forward this season, while Dusseldorp did enough to mark himself down as a star of the future.

8. Nicky Pastorelli/Dominik Schwager (All-Inkl/Munnich Lamborghini)
Points: 80
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 3
Poles: 3 (Pastorelli, 2; Schwager, 1)
Fastest laps: 2 (Schwager 2, Pastorelli 0)

Flick through the timesheets from the first half of the season, and it seems hard to believe that Pastorelli and Schwager ended up only eighth in the points. They claimed pole position in three of the first four events and appeared to have a clear edge on speed over everyone else, their team-mates at All-Inkl included. A series of incidents (for some of which they could take no blame) and the odd poor pitstop ensured that they only collected one piece of silverware in that period.

It finally came good for Pastorelli and Schwager at Navarra in July, where second on the grid behind their team-mates (by just 0.004s) was followed up by a second in the qualifying race and then an overdue victory in the main event.

That was as good as it got for this underrated duo. They enjoyed as little luck as their team-mates in the two-weekend Chinese adventure and scored only one more podium over the remainder of the season.

9. Peter Dumbreck/Richard Westbrook (JRM Nissan)
Points: 78
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 4
Poles: 2 (Westbrook, 2; Dumbreck, 0)
Fastest laps: 2 (Westbrook 1, Dumbreck 0)

The British duo's star appeared to be in the ascendant at the JR Motorsports squad at the beginning of the season. They notched up two second-placed finishes on the opening weekend of the season on a track (Yas Marina) at which the Nissan wasn't at its best, and would have claimed a double victory at Algarve but for a gearbox problem. That was where their season started to go off the rails, ultimately because the Krumm/Luhr express had built up a full head of steam.

They were never as consistent over a race distance as their team-mates, which probably owed more to car set-up than their driving style. Too many retirements not of their own making (including being punted out of both races at Zolder and Silverstone) ultimately restricted them to an unrepresentative ninth in the championship.

10. David Brabham/Jamie Campbell-Walter (Sumo Power Nissan)
Points: 75
Wins: 0
Podiums: 4
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1 (Campbell-Walter 1, Brabham 0)

It may seem strange to sing the praises of David Brabham for finishing 10th in a championship. He is, after all, a driver who has won just about everything worth winning in a sportscar career spanning 20 years. Yet there were some who were predicting that the veteran would struggle in the quirky world of the FIA GT1 World Championship in a car that was generally reckoned to be the hardest to drive on the grid.

'Brabs' took a couple of races to get to grips with his Sumo Power Nissan, but thereafter he and his team-mate Jamie Campbell-Walter were generally in the mix. What they lacked was a consistency of performance over the season. Sometimes they were right up there, other times not. The drivers themselves were at a loss to explain why. There's no doubt that Sumo was the JR Group's second-string squad, which may offer some explanation.

Any other business...

The 2011 season may well have been the high water mark for the FIA GT1 World Championship. The uncertainty that has dogged this series right from its conception went into overdrive during the course of the year, as founder Stephane Ratel strove to ensure the championship's future and fulfil his dream of having 10 manufacturers - or, in his parlance, brands - on the grid in 2012.

Aston Martin and Lamborghini were two of the 'brands' represented on a superb grid

The technical rules for next year have now changed three times and next year's world championship will be run for GT3 machinery with only minor modifications. That's no bad thing: what matters in Ratel's format is that the cars are evenly matched, and the FIA has proved that it is more than capable of creating a fair Balance of Performance.

More worrying is a shift of emphasis towards funded drivers. There is every chance that the world championship will be combined with the pro-am FIA GT3 European Championship and the three-round qualifying system has been abandoned because it frightens off lesser drivers who will bring all-important backing to the series.

Ratel is taking a pragmatic view to ensure the survival of his series, but where does that leave a championship that hangs its hat on offering close and exciting races fought out by a grid packed full of world-class drivers?