Page 168 - Decadence

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There is a common belief that motorsport started the day the second car took to the road. Racing as we know it today certainly started between the two world wars with drivers taking any available cars and modifying them into racing cars. This eventually became the Formula 1 series we now know.
The drivers were gentlemen who loved to race, this sport gave birth to the super brands we know today as characters like Enzo Ferrari evolved from Italian farmers and tractor manufactures to specialist car companies. As racing grew around the world “Gentlemen’s” racing became the heart of GT racing, many say the “Bentley Boys” kicked it all off... and one of the most exciting and glamorous racing series developed. To watch sports cars that are driven on the road race against each other on circuits has always had a great appeal. This division of motorsport has given birth to some of our most iconic and collectible cars of all time. The Ferrari 250 GTO, the Ford GT 40, indeed a creation solely developed to challenge the Ferrari on track, and the AC Cobra - all amazing machines whose development was a direct result of GT racing.
Today we see their modern equivalents form the grid, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, Mercedes, Audi, Aston Martin are some of the aspirational brands that race wheel to wheel around the world, but the man behind the organisation that has built this sport to the level we see today is Stephane Ratel. For 25 years Staphane’s company SRO Motorsports has pioneered, persevered and promoted a global series of GT racing.
As Stephane says many people have died of their dreams, his dream was to bring GT racing to an international level and that could have meant certain death, certainly in nancial terms. There were many