Pascal Witmeur’s GT4 Plan
Joost Custers sat down with Pascal Witmeur, the head of SRO Belgium, this afternoon (January 18), in his office in Brussels, to explore what is going on regarding Belcar and, specifically in this news item, the proposed GT4 Class for this year.

Pascal Witmeur has two main tasks: promoting the new look Belcar Series and running the SRO GT4 series in Europe in 2007. There definitely will be a GT4 series in 2007.

“After some of the makes dropped out of GT3 – Lotus, Nissan etc – I was convinced that there was still a market for smaller and even less expensive GT cars,” began Pascal Witmeur. “So, I started working on this GT4 project and today we’re sure to run a limited series in 2007. Races will take place at Silverstone, Oschersleben, Spa, Adria and Nogaro, almost certainly during the FIA GT weekends. The format of a weekend for the GT4s will be two races of 30 minutes, with one or two drivers per car.”

This year’s series will be a FIA sanctioned one, organized by SRO, and next year the FIA will, most probably, take over the series. There is a certain similarity with GT3, but still the differences are there.

“Indeed,” agrees Witmeur. “The technical rulebook will be based on the equalisation principle, as in GT3, but there are some major differences: GT4 will not have a minimum production number and there is no obligation whatsoever to run a minimum number of cars of one make in the GT4 series, unlike the GT3, where a minimum of six cars is required.

“Another major issue is that this year, there will be different teams preparing the same type of car. So, it’s possible to see a German, Belgian and French team all running a BMW Z4. By the end of the season, the FIA will designate one team per car, as is the case in GT3.”

GT4 will not only be seen in a European series. The cars will be allowed in national championships too, as already will be the case in Belcar this year.

“We’ll also try to get the GT4s in the Spa 24 hours, but nothing has been decided yet on that issue,” explains Witmeur.

The philosophy of GT4 is to stay as close as possible to the standard car, without any additional wings etc. and to have low-cost racing for gentleman drivers.

Possible cars:
- Nissan 350Z
- Lotus Exige
- Audi TT
- Aston-Martin Vantage V8 (as it ran in Germany and Bahrain)
- Opel Speedster
- Porsche Cayman
- Maserati Trofeo (without wings)
- Ford Mustang
- BMW Z4
- Mercedes SLK