Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach has voiced similar concerns over the future of the GT3 platform to that of Stephane Ratel, stating he “fully agrees” with the SRO Motorsports Group founder and CEO, who was one of the architects of the formula, and that organizers must “take action” not to prevent the category turning into prototype-based GT cars.
The concerns not only come amid rising costs in GT3 but also several upcoming models, including the GR GT3 and new Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, that have been first developed on the race track and then re-engineered to be low-volume production cars to meet current GT3 regulations.
The similar philosophy had been used in the GT1 era, as well as more recently with selected brands in GTE, most notably with the Ford GT, which was never essentially given to customer teams, aside from a one-off run at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2019.
“I was on the phone with Stephane for a long time and I fully share his view,” Laudenbach told selected reporters, including Sportscar365, at the recent IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship event at Road America. “I think we have to be careful.
“We’ve probably opened the door too much because it should still be GT racing, it should be affordable.
“If you look at what we do, I think we have a very clear philosophy with GT3. I think if you look at our pricing, it’s still good.
“I don’t want to see prototypes; I don’t want to see it the other way around.
“We have street-legal cars and we derive race cars from them. That’s the nature of GT3.
“I see am tendency which I’m not that happy about that. Therefore yes, I share his view, at least most of it, and I share his concerns.”
When asked what he thinks could be done, Laudenbach pointed to Ratel’s suggestions, made to selected media during the recent CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.
In addition, he personally believes that each OEM needs to produce more than just a minimum of 20 cars over the race car’s first 24 months of homologation, a rule that the FIA put into place after the Cadillac V-Series.R, which ran exclusively in Pirelli World Challenge as a factory team.
Ratel suggested that there needed to be some kind of arbiter or referee to decide what constitutes “a GT sports car” suitable for GT3.
Additionally, he termed “four pillars” underpinning the success of GT3 are not being universally respected.
Those foundation stones are the use of true production cars as the basis of GT3 racing machinery, the participation of exclusive brands, cost-effectiveness and the strong customer support provided by the manufacturers.
“He made some good proposals,” said Laudenbach on Ratel’s proposals. “It’s not easy because the door is already open and you need to define measures and criteria and it’s difficult if you’ve already let others in.
“But I think we have to take action and we don’t want to have GT prototypes racing because even so, we have a great variety of manufacturers.
“I’m long enough in the business to know that it can collapse like this, so we’ve got to be careful.
“I think some of his proposals that he brought in are not too bad. Maybe I’d even say more customer cars [requirement]. I think he said at least 30, maybe more?”
“There are other manufacturers who mainly do it as, ‘Yeah it’s customer sport and we sell a few but it’s mainly factory supported cars.’
“This, to me, is not the nature of the sport.
“You look [in IMSA] and we don’t have factory cars. We have AO [Racing] and Manthey [in GTD Pro]. Manthey is a customer because they want to promote their business in the U.S., which I think is great.
“This is how we do it. We do not want factory sport in GT.
“It’s a tricky one for the series. It’s a tricky one for the GT3 class. I look at what AO is delivering in [IMSA], it’s great racing.
“We don’t need a factory. Factories compete in GTP.”
