An Introduction To... GT World Challenge Europe

What Is GT World Challenge?

GT World Challenge is a group of regional championships that race in 3 different continents across the world. For this article, I will focus on GT World Challenge Europe Powered By AWS, or GTWC Europe for short. GTWC Europe is the premier GT racing series in the world, with close racing, factory-contracted drivers, and a large number of car brands being represented on the grid. Until this year it was known as the Blancpain GT Series – with title sponsorship from the watch brand, and often simply referred to as 'Blancpain'. There are also sister GT World Challenge championships based in America and Asia.

In Europe, the GT World Challenge is split into 2 types of racing – sprint and endurance. The sprint races are all 1 hour long, with the endurance events lasting anywhere from 3 hours all the way up to 24 hours.

The shorter nature of the 1 hour Sprint Cup races makes for a perfect introduction to GT racing. Each car has two drivers for the two 1 hour races over the weekend. Driver 1 starts the first race, then there is a mandatory ‘Pit Window’ around the 30 minute mark in each race which gives the chance for everyone to pit and change over to Driver 2 for the second half of the race. For the second race of the weekend, the roles are reversed with Driver 2 taking the start and Driver 1 finishing. Each race in GTWC has a rolling start which makes for a frantic dash down to turn 1 with cars immediately fanning out all across the start/finish straight and sometimes even onto the grass!

How to watch: https://www.youtube.com/user/gt1world

One of the best parts about the GT World Challenge is the coverage for all the races is available, in full, for free on the GT World channel on YouTube. The channel also shows qualifying for each race too, alongside a number of other championships with similar cars, such as British GT and GT World Challenge America, as well as some championships based on the more production-based GT4 category. British GT is a personal favourite of mine (destined for another blog post!) and I am also really enjoying the GT4 European Series this season. Full races from earlier this season and a number of previous seasons are also available to watch on the channel.

Commentary for these races come from the familiar voice of David Addison (also lead British Touring Car Championship commentator) and former Grand Prix driver John Watson. Action is well described by the commentators, there are plenty of replays when you want them and the graphics are clear. GTWC is a world class championship and it has the coverage to match.

The next GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup event is this weekend - 11th-13th September 2020 at the Magny-Cours circuit in France. Find out more about the championship below.

Weekend Timetable

Friday 11th September

Free Practice and Pre-qualifying

Saturday 12th September

Qualifying 1 (Driver 1), 14:40 CET, 13:40 BST

Race 1 (Driver 1 starting), 22:15 CET, 21:15 BST

Sunday 13th September

Qualifying 2 (Driver 2), 08:30 CET, 07:30 BST

Race 2 (Driver 2 starting), 13:45 CET, 12:45 BST

Where Do They Race?

Round 1 of this year’s Sprint Cup took place at the Misano circuit in Italy at the start of August with three 1 hour races, including one into the evening sun on the Saturday. The original calendar also included events at Brands Hatch in the UK and a visit to the Hungaroring, but these events were eventually replaced due to travel restrictions. Brands Hatch is expected to return to the calendar for the 2021 season.

The three remaining Sprint events on the 2020 calendar all feature venues that will be familiar to Formula One fans:

Round 2: Magny-Cours 11-13 September

The unexpected visit to the former French Grand Prix venue brings international racing on 4-wheels back to the circuit for the first time in a number of years. The venue has continued to hold races for the World Superbike Championship recently but the last Formula One Grand Prix at the venue was back in 2008. Expect the long run down to the Adelaide Hairpin to be a place where cars are getting in the slipstream of the car behind, gaining on the car in front and hoping to be the latest on the brakes into one of the slowest points of the circuit.

Round 3: Zandvoort 25-27 September

Zandvoort returns to the GT World Challenge Sprint Cup calendar for a second season after a successful return in 2019 featuring wins for both Mercedes (Raffaele Marciello/Vincent Abril) and Audi (Simon Gachet/Christopher Haase). This year the drivers will get to race on the slightly upgraded version of the circuit with NASCAR-style banking added to a couple of corners and additional safety upgrades for the expected return of Formula One to the circuit for the first time since 1985. The F1 event will now not run until next season but it will be interesting to see how the new corner profiles affect the racing.

Round 4: Barcelona 9-11 October

The Catalunya circuit is traditionally part of the GT World Challenge calendar but for the last three seasons has held a longer 3 hour race for the Endurance Cup. This year it takes the place of the Sprint Cup season finale. For this season, the Catalunya event will hold three 1 hour races rather than the usual 2, as also happened at the season opener in Misano.

Last year it was Lamborghini that took the win the Andrea Caldarelli/Albert Costa/Marco Mapelli driver line-up. Of those three drivers, only Albert Costa continues to race in the Sprint Cup championship this season in the Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini, with new co-driver Giacomo Altoè, which may prove to be an advantage to the team.

The remaining events in the GT World Challenge Endurance Cup are the season’s highlight at the Spa 24 Hour on 22-25 October and finish off the season at Paul Ricard 1000km in France on 13-15 November. The Endurance Cup events feature a large number of additional entries and guest drivers and will be the feature of another blog of their own in the future.

What are the cars like?

GT World Challenge is one of a number of championships across the world that uses the GT3 category of cars. These are ‘Grand Touring’ cars based on production road cars with the addition of a wider wheel arches to allow bigger wheels and tyres, plus large aerodynamic aids. Since the GT3 category was first created in 2005, over 20 automobile manufacturers have been represented in races, with cars either designed and developed by the manufacturers themselves or through specialist racecar builders, such as M-Sport, who develop the Bentleys. In a change to some championships, these regulations are designed for the cars to be raced by customer teams rather than by the manufacturers themselves. Often the manufacturers will support the customer teams by lending them engineers to help run the car at races and give them access to their pool of factory-contracted drivers.

The sheer variety of shapes and sizes of the cars in this category makes for interesting racing as the cars have different strengths, while their performance is balanced by regulation. This gives the organisers the ability to alter the power, weight and aerodynamic limits of each vehicle to ensure – at least on paper – that any car on the grid has the ability to be competitive. While not always completely successful, this does help to keep manufacturers interested in building cars and keeps customers in the sport. The fact that a large Bentley Continental coupe can race competitively against the more slender Audi R8 and Mercedes-AMG GT3, shows these regulations are very effective - with models from Lamborghini, Ferrari and even Lexus also on the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup grid fighting for race wins.

Don’t let the 3 in GT3 fool you – these are top class machines that very much represent the pinnacle of this type of racing. Other manufactures that currently race in other GT3 championships in Europe and across the world include Porsche, Aston Martin, Honda/Acura, BMW, McLaren and Chevrolet/Callaway. Some of these cars race in the GT World Challenge Endurance events and have been seen in the Sprint Cup races as guest entries.

Who are the drivers?

The important thing for me to get interested in a new championship is competitive racing but also some familiar drivers to follow – GT3 racing has plenty of interesting drivers and familiar names from other sorts of racing. A look down the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup entry list shows drivers with F1 race and test experience and wins in races such as Le Mans 24 hours but also one big difference – there are also amateur drivers in some of the cars. Surnames you will get used to quickly in this sort of racing include Marciello, Engel, Vanthoor, Van De Linde, Panis, Keen, and even Fisichella.

For this type of racing, every driver is given a medal rating based on their previous experience and achievements. Any professional driver is given a Platinum or Gold rating, with the top Platinum rating reserved for Formula One license holders and drivers that have won or finished highly in the world’s top championships. On the former-F1 side, Giancarlo Fisichella races in the Sprint series as a Platinum rated driver along with a number of GT specialists.

Raffaele Marciello may be a familiar name to some, having finished 4th in GP2 (now called Formula 2) as a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, and been a Sauber F1 Test Driver, before making the move to GT racing as a Mercedes factory driver. You can be sure that the team with him as part of their driving lineup will be close to the front in races. Other factory affiliated drivers include Phil Keen, rumoured to have been BBC Top Gear's ‘The Stig’ on occasions, and former Formula E driver Maro Engel.

The Silver and Bronze rated drivers are mostly amateurs, including business people who do not race as their main job. The Bronze drivers are over 30 and many race alongside their business commitments, and in some cases own the car themselves as well as driving it. Famous sportsmen Fabien Barthez and Sir Chris Hoy have also been rated Bronze when racing previously in GT3. While the Bronzes are relatively straightforward, it’s the Silver drivers that cause most of the controversy surrounding the driver ratings. The Silver ranking contains a mixture of successful amateur drivers and budding junior professionals, often creating a bit of a mismatch as some juniors can be as fast as the pros in this category. An example of a fast Silver in GT World Challenge is Aurélien Panis – son of F1 Grand Prix winner Olivier Panis. Aurélien is another driver who has had wins in international single-seater racing and podiums in World Touring Cars before moving across to GT racing.

For the GT World Challenge, there are a number of different categories depending on the medal ratings of the drivers in the car. All cars are racing for the overall win but also race against their own class too. The classes are as follows:

Pro Cup (White Background) – The top class has no restriction on driver rating. Expect these cars to contain the best drivers and always be fighting for the race wins.

Silver Cup (Silver Background) – Silver Cup cars contain 2 Silver rated drivers, in most cases these are junior pros and quicker amateurs. These can often be seen in the top 10 overall in races and fighting with the Pro cars. The best drivers in these cars, including Aurélien Panis, are likely to be the big stars of GT racing in the years to come.

Pro-Am Cup (Black Background) – These contain 1 Bronze rated driver and 1 professional, who often acts as driver coach to improve the amateurs performances. Former F1 star Giancarlo Fisichella races as the pro in the #92 Sky – Tempesta Racing Ferrari 488 GT3, with Hong Kong’s Jonathan Hui as the Bronze. This class will likely make the most of pitting early in the pit window to have the professional in the car for as long as possible.

At some events there are also Am class cars, shown with a Red Background, which contain 2 amateur drivers.

Things to look out for

While Race 1 has the amateur drivers qualifying and starting the race in the Pro-Am cars, the second race begins with the professionals driving all of the cars. This means the grids for each race can be very different, with some tracks working to each driver’s strengths more than others. Seeing how each car’s performance changes with the changing drivers is a great draw of endurance racing for me, especially seeing if an amateur driver can hold off a faster professional and how quicker drivers deal with overtaking lapped cars while battling.

The pit window gives teams the chance to use a bit of strategy in the races, as the length of the window usually gives 3 or 4 laps in which to make your pitstop. Expect to see teams looking to put their fastest driver in the car for the largest amount of the race time possible (especially if they have an amateur driver on the team) but this can sometimes lead to a congested pitlane, increasing the chances of losing time. There can be an advantage gained by staying out an extra lap and entering once most of the teams have already completed their driver changes. This can all change again if the safety car gets called out around the time of the pit window as the teams scrabble around for any advantage.

After 2 wins in the 3 races at Misano, the paring to look out for have to be Dries Vanthoor and fast youngster Charles Weerts in the #32 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi R8. The pairing were pushed hard by the #88 Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Rafaele Marciello and Timur Boguslavskiy at Misano and it may well work out similarly this weekend.

The team looking to bounce back this weekend will be the #15 Tech 1 Racing Lexus RC F of Thomas Neubauer and Aurélien Panis, who are a Silver Cup pairing that achieved 2 overall pole positions in Misano but were unable to convert them into a victory – in class or overall. The #107 CMR Bentley Continental of Jules Gounon and Nelson Panciatici also came close to a race win in Misano.

Have a go yourself!

I have to admit that I found it difficult to get into the GT World Challenge to start with but the more I got familiar with the driver names the more interested I got in the races. I went to see the Sprint Cup event at Brands Hatch back in 2018 and since then I have been more keen to catch up on races even when I am unable to catch them live. While it may seem a home for people that have failed to make it to F1, the amount of manufacturer support and excitement surrounding these events mean that more and more junior drivers are starting out in racing aiming to become a professional career in GT racing than ever before. Some manufacturers have 10 or more contracted professional drivers meaning there are far more chances to reach the top of the sport, even if the drivers themselves don’t have a massive budget to get there. This produces a wealth of talented drivers in any GT3 field.

I know people that are not always as interested in these sorts of championships as there are amateurs racing alongside the professionals but for me it gives this racing something special. As you always know that the amateurs are racing at the same time in this championship it is usually clear which amateurs are the quickest. The pace of the amateurs can vary slightly from circuit-to-circuit which really keeps the racing fresh and exciting. The chance of a ‘giant killing’ with a fast amateur keeping up with and beating some of the pros is also possible on occasion.

Another thing that has increased my interest in the championship is the release of it’s official video game – titled ‘Assetto Corsa Competitione.’ This contains all the cars and circuits from the 2018 and 2019 seasons reproduced to a very high standard, including laser scanned circuits. This game is pitched as a simulation and while its not as instantly accessible as something like Forza or Gran Turismo, it is also great fun racing through the daylight transition into night at circuits like Spa and Brands Hatch.

See what you think of the racing this weekend and join me next week for 'An Introduction To... Le Mans 24 Hours'.