Page 131 - Paddock Life Issue 13 ADRENALINE

MRGT
For 25 years our mission has been to elevate GT racing as a stand-alone category which did not deserve to be second class
to prototypes because the best looking, best sounding and most prestigious cars on the planet are second to nothing”. With only one more race meeting to go, the Blancpain GT Series has accomplished another milestone”.
The 2017 season once more saw 130 drivers from 30 countries participating with 59 cars from eleven brands. No other category in motorsport has more premium and aspirational brands represented than the highest profile GT3 Series, the Blancpain GT Series. “The series is going strong, but the backbone of GT racing has to be the combination of PRO and AM drivers with professional drivers defending the colours of their manufacturer, young drivers aiming at becoming professionals and gentleman drivers enjoying themselves. This mix of talents and objectives is essential for the series and needs to be preserved. However, our ambition is and always will be to offer a competition platform for manufacturers globally. Passion is what drives us”.
Talking about passion; my highlight of the current season was unsurprisingly the highlight of the Blancpain GT Series calendar: The Total 24 Hours of Spa.
Stability is key and we will offer our teams and drivers just that, therefore we, SRO Motorsports Group, will continue with our successful recipe. With the Blancpain GT Series and Blancpain GT Sports Club in Europe and in Asia, the US-based Pirelli World Challenge, the Total 24 Hours of Spa, the Intercontinental GT Challenge, the British and the French GT Championships and the GT4 European Series our team have created a healthy environment for GT racing. I’m happy to say our latest venture, the Blancpain GT Series Asia, has proven me right. It has started off particularly strong with an average grid of 30 cars for each race meeting. The Blancpain GT Series Asia was certainly the biggest success for us this year. We believe in the potential of GT racing in Asia and we will continue to invest and push for its further success.
Something that can also be said for the Pirelli World Challenge in the US of which SRO became shareholder last year. Greg Gill or CEO in the “states told me.
“In its 28-year history the series has never enjoyed the level of competitiveness and balance that it enjoys today. We are a global leader in number of brands, makes and models racing”.
Which is great, but our team’s focus is not only on the race track. we also try to connect people and create environments for them to meet and explore opportunities. With our new SRO Blancpain GT Series hospitality which was firstly introduced during the Total 24 Hours of Spa, there is now a luxurious environment mixing the excitement of racing and refinement of the Blancpain world. The state of the art hospitality is built to the highest standards and features a large reception space and a lounge corner. I feel this is a great addition to the paddock and I hope that teams, manufacturers and partners will use it for their means.
In an ever changing and pretty fast paced world of motorsports, GT racing has always been an essential part of sports car racing. And today GT racing with major platforms like the Blancpain GT Series is more popular than ever.
A major part of this success has to be credited to Stephane Ratel, Founder and CEO of SRO Motorsports Group. For the past 25 years Stephane Ratel paved the way for the GT racing scene we know today. GT racing today is one of the world’s leading motorsport categories and SRO Motorsports Group is the architect behind it. Paddock Life asked Stephane Ratel to contribute a page of his thoughts.
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