Stephane Ratel - In His Own Words
Part 1 – FIA GT Championship Grids, TV and Regulations

It’s a busy time for SRO’s Chairman Stephane Ratel, with new series, new national outposts in new markets and the same old challenges of ensuring that the long running FIA GT Championship continues alongside the increasing grids of the Le Mans Series.

Monsieur Ratel though found a spare hour in SRO’s London offices to sit down with dsc’s Deputy Editor to talk about the challenges ahead for SRO, for the FIA GT Championship and for sportscar racing as a whole.

How is the FIA GT Championship looking for the coming season?

I wish our teams would come forward and share what they are doing, but they are being a little “Formula One” in their approach with us at the moment, keeping their cards very close to their chests.

As you know we are going through a major evolution: over the last few years we have less and less amateur drivers in the cars and more and more professionals. So while the tradition of sportscar racing has traditionally depended on amateur drivers at different levels, contributing to the cost of the team sharing the cost between three, or sometimes two, drivers, every time that GT racing has attempted to rely on sponsorship and TV revenues it has usually lost steam.

I thought it was very important to maintain the momentum and to do that we needed more and better television, and in order to do that we needed to reduce the race distance to two hours. It is clear that anything from three hours, six hours etc. is no good for live television.

The grid is looking strong, particularly the GT1 category. We think we will have more Maseratis, two cars from Vitaphone, two from Playteam and one JMB MC12 also.

From Aston Martin we will have two BMS cars confirmed and we should have two from RaceAlliance and I trust that Phoenix will find a way either in partnership with RaceAlliance, or independently, to be back.

Reiter Enginering will team up with All.Inkl to bring two Lamborghinis and we are working hard with GL-PK, hoping that they will come with two Corvettes - because they have three drivers (so) they need a fourth one. They are talking to a number of drivers with the objective of being there with a two car team.

Lister is working on a project to have an extension of homologation, that they will present later this week, of an Evo Lister Storm. I’ve seen the drawing and it really looks very nice. That depends on the agreement of the FIA but if the car would be accepted it would be a good addition to our grid.

We are also doing everything possible to help Zakspeed to keep the Saleen.

But the Zakspeed team is in some financial trouble isn't it?

It’s a matter of public record of course but the car is there, ready to race, they just have to find the budget to put it back on the track. Zakspeed is a good name and the car showed extremely good performance so I am working very hard to try to get it back in the Championship.

It’s too early to really say but I believe the objective of 14 or 15 GT1 cars is possible.

And what has happened to the proposed Privateers GT1 Cup for perhaps older GT1s?

We will announce officially this weekend that we have confirmed a partnership with Cessna Citation to encourage non-professional drivers in GT1 with an eight round competition, the Citation Cup, that will not include Zhuhai or the Spa 24 Hours, to keep the budget lower. This will be reserved for non-professional drivers with the same criteria we have used in GT3. We are discussing with a number of teams with an interest to run Ferraris, either 550s or 575s, maybe a second JMB Maserati, maybe an Aston with Phoenix, maybe a Corvette C5-R and someone is talking of buying the ex-Balfe Saleen. The objective is to bring an additional six cars to join the Championship.

And what about GT2 this year?

In GT2 we have a strong Ferrari grid, we believe, with two cars from AF Corse, JMB will be back with one car. Scuderia Ecosse we hope to have back with two cars and we will have a new, two car team, to the Championship, Edil Cris, with a pair of 430s too - we hope a single car for Zhuhai and two confirmed for the rest of the season.

The real disappointment at the moment is a lack of Porsche entries (DSC is aware of two teams aiming to field single car 997 GT3 RSR entries at present). We hope to have two, maybe three, cars but it has been very confusing from Porsche as to what has been going on there, it has been changing every year from Freisinger and GruppeM and then EbiMotors last year. I would prefer to have Porsche just selling customer cars to everyone that wants one rather than favouring their so called ‘supported teams’ which has been against the interests of the Championship.

We worked hard on Panoz and Spykers etc. but there is a perception amongst some teams that they would not be suited to the two hour format. They are competitive over six hours, for the longer races, but our format is not good for them.

It must be disappointing for you to see Proton (FIA GTs longest serving team) move over to Le Mans Series?

You don’t make omelettes without breaking eggs and I have known Gerald (Ried) for long enough. He came to me a long time ago and said “If you reduce the duration of the race, we’ll leave.” On the other hand I had all the GT1 teams on my back and it was a difficult move to make. I sincerely regret that they have gone for now. I have known Gerald since the very early days of the BPR so it is personally bad news that they made the decision. We hope though to see him on a race by race basis. He likes to do a lot of racing so maybe he will do some FIA GT in addition to the Le Mans Series.

FIA GT trying to become more professional, with more TV, may not suit every team and for some private teams, seat time is more important. In that respect the Le Mans Series, in which I am a partner, has captured part of the market and FIA GT3 has captured another part. With all of that in mind, FIA GT itself has to be given the tools to become more professional, relying on media exposure.

What progress has been made with the TV package since the adoption of the two hour format, particularly after the criticisms of some of the teams of last year’s coverage in the German market?

We had to take the risk and announce we were moving to two hour races, and while we still have to complete some negotiations, we are looking very close to the package we wanted for the season.

We have achieved our first agreement with DSF in Germany, the leading sports channel in that market, which reaches 95% of German homes - with most races to be covered live and the rest aired in full on tape delay. That alone will be a huge advantage for our German teams.

We are waiting for a final answer from Premiere, another important German channel, which could see us covering all track sessions, including practice and qualifying.

We also have a number of ongoing negotiations with other countries: we have achieved live coverage on 7 TV in Russia, we have a new and even better deal for live coverage with Sky in Italy, we have live coverage on Sport 1 in Holland and far better coverage in Belgium this year, which is another very important market for us where we will be on RTL, an edited highlights programme on RTL TVI - and we will have race news on LTBF 1 & 2, the main terrestrial networks.

In France we have grown our programming on the second largest sport network, Sport +, part of the Canal + network, and second only to Eurosport in that market. We have a 52 minute programme at the moment and I am working hard to get some of the races covered live there too.

In the UK there will be highlights on Motors and we are still in discussion with Sky.

I am optimistic that we will get positive results from those we are still in discussions with, and with so much more live coverage, thanks to the two hour format, it will make a big difference and will help the teams enormously - as they look for budget from sponsorship and rely less on private money.

If we get the TV deals confirmed and we get the cars that we believe are coming, we will have an extremely competitive grid in GT1 and a good fight in GT2.

Some of the new FIA GT regulations seem very restrictive on the allowed number of component changes in the 2007 season, particularly taking into account that the Championship features a 24 Hour race?

Some say we should never run a Championship and listen to the competitors, but we chose to take their views on a way forward, to cut costs.

The reality now though is that the calendar we now have, not just for Spa but with circuits like Bucharest and Adria, where there is a lot of braking involved, means that the teams are telling us that the two sets of brake discs and calipers we have suggested for the season will not be enough.

A revised proposal will be discussed with the FIA technical commission this Friday which will look at relaxing the rule a little on the braking, and also on the gearbox too, where we feel perhaps our first proposal went a little far. One thing is for sure though: restricting the races to two hours is saving nine hours of running costs. That makes a lot of sense for the teams running the GT1 cars, where running costs are paid by the hour. In GT2 though some of the teams feel they have lost out more in the reduction in driving time than they gain by reducing running costs.

Part 2