The GT2 European Series (formerly the GT Sports Club and Blancpain GT Sports Club), organized by

SRO Motorsports Group SRO Motorsports Group (formerly the Stéphane Ratel Organisation) is an international sporting organisation best known for promoting and running a variety of racing events and series, including the Total 24 Hours of Spa, Intercontinental GT Challe ...

, is an

auto racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...

series for the

SRO GT2 SRO GT2 is a class of Grand tourer racing cars aimed at gentleman drivers and maintained by the SRO Motorsports Group. Despite the name, this class slots between Group GT4 and Group GT3 in terms of performance. The class also shouldn’t be confus ...

class of grand tourer cars, designed for amateur pay drivers in the FIA Bronze category. This target audience is also known in sportscar as "

gentleman driver A pay driver is a driver for a professional auto racing team who, instead of being paid by the owner of their car, drives for free and brings with them either personal sponsorship or personal or family funding to finance the team's operations. Th ...

s". The GT Sports Club Europe series was fully suspended in 2020 as a consequence of the global

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, and thus no GT2-class competition was held in 2020. The GT2 series was re-established in a significantly different format in 2021, adding a Pro-Am style subclass and Fanatec as the title sponsor; this Fanatec GT2 European Series continued in 2022. The 2021-onwards GT2 series runs in support of the GT World Challenge Europe weekends and includes Friday practice and qualifying with one race each on Saturday and Sunday.

History

The inaugural Blancpain GT Sports Club series in 2015 was aimed at amateur pay drivers, with competition limited to drivers of a grade similar to the FIA Bronze category at the time, and with cars homologated in a number of ways and open to running older chassis. By the end of 2019 it was possible to use any of: FIA GT3 for that season, re-homologated cars from earlier GT3 generations, RACB G3 cars, GTE-spec cars, and Renault Sport Trophy cars, all competing in a single class through a

Balance of Performance In sports car racing, balance of performance (BoP) is a regulation and mechanism that maintains parity between competing vehicles by adjusting limits on a car's parameters, such as horsepower, weight, engine management, and aerodynamics to preven ...

process and additional Cup Trophys based on driver age or car subclass. In the early seasons Bronze included subcategories Titanium for drivers aged 50-59 and Iron for drivers over 60 years of age; these subcategories are not in use in 2022. The Sports Club raceday design was originally focused on running lunchtime-to-lunchtime to ease weekend travel and encourage "arrive and drive" entries, with free practice and qualifying sessions on day one, followed by qualifying and main races the following day. GT Sports Club Europe was suspended in 2020 as a consequence of the global

. The "GT Sports Club" concept was relaunched in 2021 as a umbrella covering a championship built on an also new GT2 class; a sister GT3-only championship with a similar approach as before to running multiple generations of GT3 together; and a non-competitive "GT1 Sports Club" aimed at bringing road-going supercars on track together. These series now support the GT World Challenge Europe calendar.

Champions

References

External links

* Sports car racing series {{motorsport-stub