Brilliant article on the 97 FIA GT championship

[ali_khl]

Plenty of politics and shadow-games, doesnt sound too different from F1 today. Some fantastic pictures too -

http://speedhunters.com/archive/2009/09/10/retrosp...

[williamp]

I remember the season well, although in my opinion the rot had started the year before with Porsche, not Mercedes- the Porsche GT1 was a disguised racing car, the Mercedes CLK-GTR a thinly disguised racing car. And the Nissan R390 (and afterwards, the Toyota Gt-One) were racing cars with a single model built as a road car- like sticking a numberplate on a modern Audi R15 and saying "ta-daaa"

having said that, they were great races. 1996 was my first Le Mans, and watching the Mclarens there and at brands gave me a love of endurance racing which has never left me

[FNG]

Yes, it struck me that Porsche being all aggrieved about the CLK was a bit rich considering they'd rocked up with the GT1 a year previously, but just hadn't gone as aggressive with their "road car" version.

McLaren always had a special place in that era for actually making a road car, a true road car, that won races. Shame it only lasted one season before the other manufacturers came in with rather cynical designs, only one of which would ever have metallic paint and leather trim.

[Nick M]

williamp said:

I remember the season well, although in my opinion the rot had started the year before with Porsche, not Mercedes- the Porsche GT1 was a disguised racing car, the Mercedes CLK-GTR a thinly disguised racing car. And the Nissan R390 (and afterwards, the Toyota Gt-One) were racing cars with a single model built as a road car- like sticking a numberplate on a modern Audi R15 and saying "ta-daaa"

having said that, they were great races. 1996 was my first Le Mans, and watching the Mclarens there and at brands gave me a love of endurance racing which has never left me

'97 was my first Le Mans but did get to Brands for at least one of the races to see the McLarens, etc.

And which year was it that the 'road legal' Porsche 962 won Le Mans ? The Dauer one or whoever it was that built it ? That was a p*ss-take if ever there was one.

[entropy]

Even though the homologation rules were a complete and utter joke, manufacturers taking the piss by modifying Group C/prototypes cars as 'Grand Tourers', I still see it as glorious era in endurance racing especially post-Group C.

Always a delight when you get such rich manufacturer involvement in a race series.

Regards to the Merc. DTM/ITC had just died and FIA did all they could to allow Merc to enter and homologate their car in time for racing in 1997.

[MATT427]

Great article, one thing i was left thinking was.

Where are all the cars now?

[freedman]

Nick M said:

williamp said:

I remember the season well, although in my opinion the rot had started the year before with Porsche, not Mercedes- the Porsche GT1 was a disguised racing car, the Mercedes CLK-GTR a thinly disguised racing car. And the Nissan R390 (and afterwards, the Toyota Gt-One) were racing cars with a single model built as a road car- like sticking a numberplate on a modern Audi R15 and saying "ta-daaa"

having said that, they were great races. 1996 was my first Le Mans, and watching the Mclarens there and at brands gave me a love of endurance racing which has never left me

'97 was my first Le Mans but did get to Brands for at least one of the races to see the McLarens, etc.

And which year was it that the 'road legal' Porsche 962 won Le Mans ? The Dauer one or whoever it was that built it ? That was a p*ss-take if ever there was one.

1994

[AlexS]

Didn't BMW pull a similar trick to Mercedes when they ran the M3 GTR in GT2. After winning the championship they then pulled the car from racing and so didn't have to build the required number of road cars.