Is GT3 entering ‘the danger zone’?

Stephane Ratel tells a salutary story about the death of GT1 at the end of the 1990s. He was watching the Donington Park round of the FIA GT Championship in September 1997 from the pitwall when owner-driver Ray Bellm, a key player in the McLaren F1 GTR story, sidled up to him to deliver a stark statement: “Are you happy watching your funeral procession?” Ratel wondered what the hell the Briton was talking about given that there were 41 cars in the field, 22 in GT1 representing five manufacturers.

Nearly three decades on, the GT3 class arguably appears to be in even ruder health, yet the warning signs are there, maintains Ratel. It is, believes the architect of the category, entering “the danger zone”.  

“I didn’t understand what Ray was saying at the time,” recalls Ratel. “He said, ‘Can’t you see it is dead?’ But he was right. By the next year we’d lost half the grid and the year after it was dead. Ray was absolutely right and the signs were all there.”  

“He said, ‘Can’t you see it is dead?’ But he was right. By the next year we’d lost half the grid and the year after it was dead. The signs were all there” Stephane Ratel

Ratel didn’t spot them at the time but, after approaching 35 seasons in the business of promoting sportscar racing, he has grown to recognise the signals. And they are all there in the year that GT3 celebrated its 20th birthday to great fanfare. It’s why he has told the manufacturers involved in the category that they need to change their ways or GT3 will “go to the wall”. It is time for a reset. 

Ratel raised the dangers facing GT3 at a meeting with the manufacturers during June’s Spa 24 Hours, the category’s blue riband race as both a round of the GT World Challenge Europe and the Intercontinental GT Challenge. And there are many, he contends. But most obvious from the outside are the parallels with the end of the original GT1 category resulting from an arms race. “A 10-year-old could spot them,” says Ratel.  

Back then, Porsche moved the goalposts in 1996 with its 911 GT1 mid-engined special, and then Mercedes picked them up and ran with them when it built the CLK GTR for 1997 and the CLK LM that followed in 1998. Three cars on their way to GT3 over the next few years can be regarded as their spiritual successors. Toyota’s GR GT3 will arrive next season; a new Mercedes – like its predecessor known as the AMG GT3 – will probably follow a year after that; and a car from South Korean manufacturer Genesis based on a showcar called the Magma GT3 Concept may not be far behind.  

Ratel has 35 seasons of promoting sportscar racing under his belt, so knows very well when a category needs a reset

Photo by: Qian Jun / MB Media via Getty Images

Ratel admits that he has yet to see any of the three cars in the flesh – that should probably read in the aluminium and carbon – but he has a problem with them. It’s one that was highlighted by a line in the press statement from Genesis, Hyundai’s prestige brand, when it took the covers off its interpretation of what it is calling for now the Magma GT3 Concept in the week of the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.

“The Magma GT3 Concept reflects an exploration of GT3 category technical regulations through a performance-first design approach rather than being derived from an existing road-going model,” it read. That, reckons Ratel, “is the definition of what killed GT1 in the 1990s”. 

Porsche dipped into its parts bin when it realised that it didn’t have a car with which it could compete at the top level in the reborn world of GT racing in Europe, at Le Mans and in the realm of the BPR Organisation that Ratel helped establish. Mercedes followed with the CLK, conceived and built in little more than four months after its playground in the International Touring Car series (formerly the DTM) was cancelled.

Porsche dipped into its parts bin when it realised it didn’t have a car with which it could compete at the top level in the reborn world of GT racing in Europe, at Le Mans and in the realm of the BPR Organisation that Ratel helped establish

Both were cars conceived for the race track and then homologated for the road. Eventually. Mercedes managed to persuade the FIA to shift the requirement for that all-important paperwork to be in place at the beginning of the season in which the car started racing to its end. 

That makes for a key difference between those cars and, say, the Ferrari 296 GT3 and the Lamborghini Temerario GT3 that entered competition this year. Both marques made play of how development of their latest GT3 contenders was undertaken in parallel with their respective road versions.

That’s nothing new. After Audi decided that the show car called the Le Mans quattro unveiled in 2003 should be turned into a production machine – the marque’s first mid-engined sportscar – an engineer from Audi Sport was embedded in the design team even though it wasn’t clear where it would end up racing. Toyota, Mercedes and Genesis are undertaking the process the other way around. Race car designers are leading the process.  

Ratel received stark prediction that GT1 was on the verge of its demise at Donington in 1997

Photo by: McKlein Photography / LAT Images via Getty Images

What Toyota, Mercedes and Genesis, on the assumption that it pushes ahead with the project, are doing runs contrary to one of the foundation stones of GT3. It was based on the idea of a production car plucked from the showroom being given a minimal racing make-over and parachuted onto the race track. GT3s have become ever more sophisticated over the past 20 years, but what the category wasn’t conceived for was racing specials.  

The writing has been on the wall for GT3 for a few years. New regulations introduced for 2022 by the FIA – and GT3 was launched by Ratel in conjunction with the governing body and therefore remains under its regulatory remit – represented a major change. It put what might be described as a traditional rulebook in place, whereas in the past building a GT3 car was more a process of negotiation.

The more a manufacturer needed to change from the road car to meet the prescribed performance targets, the more they were allowed to do. It allowed a front-engined Bentley Continental, two generations thereof, to be competitive with a mid-engined Ferrari. 

“That was the essence of GT3. The front-engined grand tourers like the Bentley were allowed waivers so that they could compete with real sportscars, supercars even. I don’t think it could happen today” Stephane Ratel

“That was the essence of GT3,” says Ratel. “The front-engined grand tourers like the Bentley were allowed waivers so that they could compete with real sportscars, supercars even, like a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. I don’t think it could happen today.” 

That development explains why Mercedes, for example, was forced down the special route. Together with HWA, which developed the manufacturer’s first two GT3 racers, it concluded that the C192 model GT that hit the market in 2023 to replace the C190 on which the current racer is based was unsuitable for motorsport. It didn’t help that it is a 2+2 rather than a two-seater like its predecessor. Cars are getting bigger and heavier, a trend accelerated by hybridisation. As a point of interest, the new Merc, the Toyota and, it is believed, the Genesis are not hybrids.  

Developing a special is a costly exercise for a manufacturer, which may or may not be passed on to the customer: Toyota hasn’t revealed a price as yet for the GR GT3. Ratel is also worried about the effects of this new breed of car on the Balance of Performance, another of the cornerstones of GT3. It’s difficult enough balancing the cars at the moment, he explains, before the arrival of pure-bred racers.  

Telling line from Genesis concept press release is, says Ratel, “the definition of what killed GT1 in the 1990s”

Photo by: Genesis

At the other end of the spectrum is what Ratel calls a touring car, another of his gripes. BMW was allowed to replace its M6 – a true GT, he insists, in a line of cars that included the 3.0 CSL of the 1970s – with what is effectively the German manufacturer’s latest M3. Its attempts to join FIA-sanctioned GT racing under Ratel’s umbrella with previous versions of that car were always rebuffed. The E46-shape M3 GTR and then the E92 M3 GT2 did the majority of their racing under Le Mans regulations.  

GT3 is meant to be the domain of prestige machinery. Ratel admits to reservations about Ford’s participation with the seventh-generation Mustang: he describes it as a “pony car rather than a sportscar”. Again he calls on history to highlight the dangers involved.  

Lamborghini developed a GT2 version of the Diablo for 1998 off the back of the success of a one-make series started by Ratel two years before: he commissioned a run of cars known as the SV-R for his Supertrophy. The GT2 project was stopped after Lamborghini was purchased by the Volkswagen group and placed under the control of Audi in the middle of that year.

That is another of the building blocks of GT3. The principle is that manufacturers develop a car and then sell them to independent teams to represent them and provide the necessary back-up and support

When Audi boss Franz-Josef Paefgen saw the car, he said something along these lines, according to Ratel: “Stop that project immediately. We didn’t buy Lamborghini to be beaten by an American muscle car.” Paefgen was referring to Chrysler’s Dodge Viper GTS-R, then the dominant car in the secondary GT division. It was a problem of “product identification”, according to Ratel. The lure of GT3 is the chance it offers a manufacturer to race against its peers in the marketplace. Ferrari certainly doesn’t regard the M4 as a competitor to its 296. 

Another American marque is clearly another cause for concern for Ratel. He revealed that he named and shamed manufacturers for what they are doing wrong at Spa but hasn’t gone into the full details of his tirade. So he’s not mentioning Chevrolet by name, but his comments suggest that since its arrival with the Corvette Z06 GT3.R it has not truly committed to his ideas on customer racing.

That is another of the building blocks of GT3. The principle is that manufacturers develop a car and then sell them to independent teams to represent them and provide the necessary back-up and support. The category was not conceived as a playground for all-out factory teams.  

Mercedes has opted for a racing special because current road car is deemed unsuitable for motorsport

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

Rules introduced in 2018 demand that a manufacturer must sell 20 GT3 cars in the first two years of a car’s homologation. But there is nothing that states they have to be actively racing, and there are not even half that number of GT3 ’Vettes competing regularly this season. “There is no obligation to do a proper customer programme,” says Ratel. “At the moment manufacturers can build the 20 cars, give the majority to some kind of factory team and sell a few to collectors.” 

Policing a rule that demands ‘x’ cars must be out there racing in the hands of customers would be easy in a world where the results of every race of any worth are available online, he insists. “It is clear we have to demand a higher number of race cars produced and to set a number of cars that are actually racing,” he continues. 

Ratel’s concerns on multiple fronts explain why he believes there needs to be a rethink of GT3. “What I am advocating is that the FIA should get everyone around the table – SRO [the Stephane Ratel Organisation], the other race promoters and the manufacturers and work something out for the future,” he argues. “Do we want a category for anything with a roof and do we want specials? Maybe there is room for them, but it is not GT3.  

“You need a referee who decides according to some clear definitions if a car is going too far and then has the power to say, ‘Sorry, very nice project but it is too extreme: come back with a genuine GT car.’”  

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Toyota’s super-purposeful-looking GR GT3 is set to arrive next year; a price has yet to be disclosed

Photo by: Toyota