In the weekend of the #Spa24h, Stéphane Ratel spoke to us about the future of GT3 racing and he was giving the FIA and their technical commission two clear choices: either continue down this path and rename it GT1 or intervene and make it cost-effective again. The founder and CEO of the SRO Motorsports Group gave an update during a round table with a select group of the media in Portimão. "We're having conversations and I have explained my views in detail and I will continue to do so. I think what we presented is common sense. Categories in sports cars and touring cars and every form of motorsport outside of Formula One grow and die out of course. They collapse due to costs. It's always been the case. So these are relevant questions which need to be addressed and I think the FIA understand it. But you can't just change everything. You have to respect the fact that you have manufacturers developing cars and that they're coming with new models and you can't just tell them: 'Hey, you're gonna find this funny, but in two years we're gonna come up with something new and you can park your beautiful Toyota that took you five years to develop and for which you produced a special road car.' There needs to be a soft transition, but in my opinion we definitely need to think of the long-term health of the GT category. which has to be through cost control." Ratel has been discussing it with the manufacturers themselves as well. "Some tell me: 'You know, but Stéphane, it's been twenty years [since the start of GT3], things have moved on.' And twenty years ago you could take most of the road cars and just prepare them to go racing. Now with how the automotive industry is, you just can't go racing with most of the road cars. They are just too far away from something you can transform to go racing. So that's also something we have to take into consideration. So there are interesting conversations and let's see how it will go. And you know, there are a lot of stakeholders. You have the manufacturers, of course you have the FIA, you have the ACO, you have the ADAC, you have IMSA, you have GTA in Japan. So you need to get everybody on board with the same understanding." Portimão featured the largest-ever Endurance Cup field outside of Spa with 61 cars. "And we could have more", Ratel explained about the capacity grid. But while GT racing in mainland Europe is healthier than ever, other markets are going down. "In six weekends I was among others in Indianapolis, I was in Beijing, we got people in Sydney and the weekend before that we had Suzuka, and when you are in different parts of the world every weekend, you see that the picture is not the same everywhere. There is a concentration of course here, as the marketing returns grow, and you see the public, you see the viewership, you see it growing and therefore it can sustain and I never doubt that. But let me be clear that once the last Audi and the last [current] AMG is gone, in reality we're back to GTE. Some championships like the DTM, IMSA, WEC and GT World Challenge Europe can sustain GTE costs, simply because the marketing return is worth it. But you have many other GT3 championships around the world and I see it for example in Australia. I was invited once [before it became GT World Challenge Australia] and you didn't even have any cameras or anything and you still had 26 new GT3 cars. Now to get 15 cars with promotion and TV coverage is already difficult, and you see in these markets that it's not easy. The number of GT3 cars in British GT is also suffering. So it's definitely a problem we need to address. I wouldn't say long-term, but we need to start addressing it now, even if the final delivery comes in some years." 📸 SRO/JEP | #GTWorldEurope