Jean-Philippe Beloc Le Mans drivers parade 2011

The 2001 FIA GT Championship was the fifth season of

FIA GT Championship The FIA GT Championship was a sports car racing series organized by the Stéphane Ratel Organisation (SRO) at the behest of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship was mostly concentrated in Europe, but throughout ...

, 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 endorsed by the

Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA; en, International Automobile Federation) is an association established on 20 June 1904 to represent the interests of motoring organisations and motor car users. It is the governing body for ...

(FIA) and organized by the

Stéphane Ratel Organisation 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 ...

(SRO). The races featured

grand touring A grand tourer (GT) is a type of car that is designed for high speed and long-distance driving, due to a combination of performance and luxury attributes. The most common format is a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive two-door coupé with either a ...

cars divided into two categories and awarded drivers and teams championships and cups for each category. The season began on 31 March 2001 and ended on 21 October 2001 after eleven races held in Europe, and included for the first time the

Spa 24 Hours The 24 Hours of Spa is an Endurance racing (motorsport), endurance racing event for cars held annually since 1924 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Stavelot, Belgium. It is currently sponsored by TotalEnergies. History The Spa 24 Hours was ...

as a premiere

endurance Endurance (also related to sufferance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from a ...

event for the series.

Christophe Bouchut Christophe Bouchut (born 24 September 1966 in Voiron, Isère) is a French professional racing driver. He currently competes in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series, driving for Dexwet-df1 Racing and Alex Caffi Motorsport in a part-time effort. He won ...

and

Jean-Philippe Belloc Jean-Philippe Belloc is a racecar driver from France. He was born in Montauban, on 24 April 1970. Belloc started racing in single-seaters and won the French Formula Renault Championship in 1992, at his second attempt, after four wins. Moving up t ...

of France won the FIA GT Drivers' Championship, while their team Larbre Compétition-Chereau were the teams champions, both earning five race victories including at Spa.

David Terrien David Terrien (born 27 October 1976 in Nantes) is a French racing driver. He has competed in such series as International Formula 3000 and the French Formula Three Championship The French Formula Three Championship was a motor racing series for ...

and

Christian Pescatori Christian Pescatori is a professional racecar driver from Italy. He was born in Brescia, on 1 December 1971. Pescatori started his career in single-seater racing, becoming Italian Formula 3 Champion in 1993, before moving up to Formula 3000. He ...

of JMB Competition won the N-GT Cups after six race wins.

Schedule

The SRO Group reached an agreement with

Eurosport Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through Warner Bros. Discovery Sports#Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe properties, its international sports unit, it operates two ...

, the promoter and broadcaster of the

European Touring Car Championship The European Touring Car Championship was an international touring car racing series organised by the FIA. It had two incarnations, the first one between 1963 and 1988, and the second between 2000 and 2004. In 2005 it was superseded by the World T ...

, in which both series would share identical calendars. The events were promoted by Eurosport as the ''Super Racing Weekend'', giving both series equal promotion and television coverage. The Formula Renault 2000 Eurocup was also included as a support series for all events. The only exception to this format would be the

, added to the FIA GT calendar as a stand-alone event, separate from the ETCC, after formerly holding touring car races for several decades. The addition of Spa marked the return of endurance racing to the championship for the first time since

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

and expanded the calendar from ten to eleven events. Much of the rest of the schedule remained the same, although some races were moved to different times of the year.

Monza Monza (, ; lmo, label=Lombard language, Lombard, Monça, locally ; lat, Modoetia) is a city and ''comune'' on the River Lambro, a tributary of the Po River, Po in the Lombardy region of Italy, about north-northeast of Milan. It is the capit ...

returned to the opening of the season, as it had been in

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

, and

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

and

Magny-Cours Magny-Cours () is a Communes of France, commune in the Nièvre Departments of France, department in central France. It is the home of the ''Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours'', a famous Motorsport#Motor racing, motor racing circuit (whose name is of ...

moved from the end of the season to the second and third rounds respectively. This moved the Spanish and Portuguese events to the end of the year, with

Jarama Jarama () is a river in central Spain. It flows north to south, and passes east of Madrid where the El Atazar Dam is built on a tributary, the Lozoya River. It flows into the river Tagus in Aranjuez. The Manzanares is a tributary of the Jarama ...

replacing

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...

for the Spanish event. The

Nürburgring The is a 150,000 person capacity motorsports complex located in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It features a Formula One, Grand Prix race track built in 1984, and a long "North loop" track, built in the 1920s, around t ...

also returned to the series for the first time since

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

as the sole German event, replacing

EuroSpeedway Lausitz The Lausitzring (formally known as the Dekra Lausitzring for ownership reasons) is a race track located near Klettwitz (a civil parish of Schipkau, Oberspreewald-Lausitz district) in the state of Brandenburg in northeast Germany, near the bor ...

. All events, with the exception of Spa, retained their distance format.

Entries

GT

N-GT

Results and standings

Race results

Points were awarded to the top six finishers in each category. Entries were required to complete 75% of the race distance in order to be classified as a finisher. Drivers were required to complete 20% of the total race distance for their car to earn points. Teams scored points for all cars that finished a race. For the Spa 24 Hours, points were doubled.

Driver championships

GT Championship

The title was awarded jointly to

and

who shared the wheel of the No. 7 Larbre Compétition–Chereau

Chrysler Viper GTS-R The Chrysler Viper GTS-R (also known as the Dodge Viper GTS-R when raced in North America) was a successful racing variant of the Dodge Viper developed in conjunction with Chrysler of North America, Oreca of France, and Reynard Motorsport of the ...

N-GT Cup

The title was awarded jointly to

and

who drove the No. 62 JMB Competition Ferrari 360 Modena N-GT.

Team championships

GT Championship

N-GT Cup

References

External links

Official FIA GT homepage

Sporting Regulations
Retrieved from web.archive.org on 26 February 2009
Points Tables
Retrieved from www.fiagt.com on 26 February 2009 {{DEFAULTSORT:2001 Fia Gt Championship Season

FIA GT Championship seasons