Stephane Ratel - In His Own Words
Part 2 – Le Mans, The Le Mans Series, FIA GT3 and the Mosler Affair

Graham Goodwin continues with his series of questions to Stephane Ratel.

Was it a pleasant surprise to you that the top two teams in the 2006 FIA GT Championship gained an auto entry for the Le Mans 24 Hours?

This was part of our initial agreement between SRO and the ACO when we partnered into the Le Mans Series. It is true that some years I have not had the request from the teams to do it so it was not really needed, but this year I had a strong request both from Scuderia Ecosse and from BMS wanting to do Le Mans so I asked the ACO and it went forward with no problem. An agreement is an agreement.

So the drive behind the ‘auto’ entry for FIA GT teams is driven by whether the teams request it? Does that mean that there was no such request in 2005 (when the top FIA GT teams did not receive such an entry)?

There is an agreement between SRO and the ACO and they, just like us, will honour that if the teams request it.

It is true also that at one point I didn’t ask for it because in the first year BMS decided to do just Le Mans and not the FIA GT Championship. So I said maybe this is not a good idea, maybe I should not offer that because I should concentrate on keeping the FIA GT teams in the FIA GT Championship and not motivate them to go somewhere else.

It was something of a surprise to see that the Silverstone round of FIA GT, your opening European round, the opening round of the FIA GT3 Championship and the inaugural rounds for both GT4 and the 90s Revival, clashes with the Le Mans Series race in Valencia. I presume that’s not something that you are happy about?

I can talk very frankly about this. Once again, in our agreement with the Le Mans Series, it was clear that we should not have clashing dates.

The date for Silverstone was published in May last year, a long way in advance and I said all along it couldn’t be changed as it was linked in with a move for the China round at Zhuhai, from an October / November date, to avoid running a week before and after F1 races, which made it very bad for media coverage and sponsorship.

The (Chinese) promoter wanted a move to the start of the season and I knew that the time to bring back the cars from China, which we can only do by sea as air freight from Asia is awfully expensive. So I knew I couldn’t change this date and have said it all along. We also initially had another clash, with Germany and Oschersleben, but we managed to change that.

I know Patrick Peter has tried to look for other options but they had a problem I believe working around the F1 Grand Prix, and they were left with this date.

What we are trying to do though is to arrange the calendar for the weekend that would allow any driver that wants to compete in both events to take a jet between the two, allowing them to start in one and finish in the other.

We have heard that one of Audi’s principal reasons for deciding not to race in Le Mans Series is that the level of promotion is not up to the required standard. What exactly is SRO’s role on that front?

SRO is a partner in Le Mans Series. SRO was the promoter through a company, ISL, in partnership with Martin Birrane, of the FIA Sportscar Championship - if you go back before the Le Mans Series.

And in the beginning of 2004, after one year of disaster with FIA SCC, I thought that prototype racing can only work if we do really long distance, 1000kms, and I announced my idea of reviving four big 1000km races for the FIA SCC. At the same time, the ACO with Patrick Peter, had started on a project to develop the Le Mans Series with four hour races and we all soon found out that competing against each other would soon create the same chaos that killed the first European Le Mans Series.

SRO ran the first two American Le Mans races for Don Panoz in 2000: in my opinion the best Le Mans races we have had in Europe, they were fantastic. They had success with the public both at Silverstone and at Nurburgring and I thought at that time if we go with FIA Sportscars against Le Mans Series we are both going to lose substantially. We got together, established quickly that the same opinion was held by the ACO. and we teamed up.

At the time M. Cosson was the President of the ACO and we made a 50:50 partnership between FIA SCC and the ACO to form the Le Mans Series.

It has remained the same and though I was involved in the organisation in the first year (2004), I no longer do that. It was very difficult with the development of SRO’s activities and to represent the interests of the Le Mans Series and FIA GT at the same time. So we progressively left the management to Patrick (Peter) and I am now just a shareholder. It’s very nice to be a shareholder. I go to four board meetings a year and to one or two races to say hello. I’m not directly involved but I’m very happy that it’s running well and that we have managed to revive the prototype category, which was the main objective.

But the problem remains that you cannot hide the fact that what is good for the competitors is not always good for the public and for their entertainment. That is exactly where the difficulty of endurance racing has been for so many years now, in trying to bring together participants and the public, and unfortunately sportscar racing has not found an answer yet.

Many would say that there are things that could be done for the Le Mans Series spectator appeal by learning lessons from elsewhere. While there are of course more language barriers in Europe for things like circuit (and web) radio there have been successful initiatives including the ALMS position lights system. Has consideration been given to adopting any of those initiatives here?

As I said I’m not directly involved in the management of the series, but of course I can discuss my opinions in general terms.

It’s true that it is surprising to bring the Le Mans name and the Le Mans competitors to Silverstone, where you have so many British fans, and to do quite a reasonable amount of promotion around it and to have nobody showing up.

As Richard Phillips told me at the time, it was like having Wimbledon at Northampton, even if you were having the same players nobody would come because Wimbledon is a one-off, traditional event where people go simply because it’s Wimbledon. Le Mans maybe is a little bit the same.

At the end of the day what you need is entertainment and the entertainment of sitting there for six hours watching the cars going around with many drivers and brands who are not very well known might not be there, so you need to create the entertainment somewhere else.

This is what the Le Mans 24 Hours does. They create an event where people go to drink, to have fun, to go out, to go to the funfair and that’s what I ascribe the success of the really long races to, Le Mans and Spa, where you have more than racing to entertain you.

In that respect I think that the upcoming manufacturers coming to the series should bring more resources, which should mean that they can develop the entertainment part of the weekend, and when this entertainment is linked to the races themselves the public will follow and it will probably grow.

I am optimistic for the future. I think the concept of these long races is right and it should succeed.

Moving on to FIA GT3, it had a great first season and is now bedding down and spreading into the national arena in several markets too. We now kick into the point where the championship rules become a little more restrictive. You must have three car teams and no marque is allowed more than six cars (if they competed in the opening season), with new cars to the series being allowed a single three car team. Are we going to see any major changes to that plan and what can we expect to see in terms of new blood for 2007?

The formula will be exactly that. GT3 has been a phenomenal success: we can always have last minute bad news, but I think that we will have an enormous grid.

It is a difficult exercise to stay firm on the concept of this six cars per brand, three cars per team is fantastic. It looks unique, no championship has this three cars, all in the same colours and it is really looking very good.

We know we will lose Maserati this season, but we will have six Ascaris, six Astons, six Corvettes, six Dodges, six Ferraris, six Lamborghinis and six Porsches, plus three Ford GT, the cars being built by PSI but run by a Swiss team, three Morgans from Mirabeau. Three or possibly six Jaguars. I’m not sure where that is at the moment but I am expecting confirmation very soon and there is now a possible new project with three Mustangs, so it could be up to sixty cars and even if we have one brand failing it is still a very, very strong series.

And what about the rumoured BMW interest in GT3?

If private companies come with BMW (the Z4) it will be in GT4.

And what of the Mosler GT3 question? It has clearly resolved itself in some markets, but do you regret how this all played out?

It was unfortunate, but you have to appreciate that the series has evolved. It was originally started by companies completely independent from the manufacturers: from the start, Porsche and Ferrari said they were not interested. And with the success now you have manufacturers looking at it with interest - and the arrival of smaller brands such as the Mosler, which it has to be said has a radical look, was not well perceived by them.

And of course the car is simply not eligible because the rules say you have to have 200 production cars, which they didn’t. In that case you need a waiver. A waiver can only be given if everyone agrees to it. So when the manufacturers put their strong disagreement against it, it didn’t work.

For me, more cars and more variety is better and on a National level we can arrange things, but on the FIA level it is far more difficult.

Many would argue that those established manufacturers got where they are by competing – Is it really fair that companies who have had the opportunity to do that they should be in a position to prevent newcomers from doing the same?

You have to have a rule. We would not have broken it for Porsche and Ferrari. You have to have 200 cars, it isn’t a huge number. If you don’t keep to that you could easily end up with really very specialist cars that are built in tiny numbers and designed mainly for competition.

I can understand the other point of view and the situation we have with the Mosler now is down to each market to decide. Germany was not very keen on having it because they wanted to stay strictly to the FIA homologated cars.

In the UK we have more freedom and the Mosler has been running here for many years. In Belgium too, Mosler is a known car. The bottom line is that where the car is already competing it should be allowed to continue. In new markets it is all different. In France, if there is interest from a team we will need to put a request to the French Federation.