FIA GT1 World Championship
The FIA GT1 World Championship was a world championship sports car racing series developed by the SRO Group and regulated by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), held from 2010 to 2012. It featured multiple grand tourer race cars based on production road cars and conforming with the GT1 (2010–2011) and GT3 (2012) regulations competing in one-hour races on multiple continents. All cars were performance balanced with weight and restrictor adjustments to artificially equalise their performance. Championships were awarded each season for drivers and teams.
The FIA GT1 World Championship started in 2010 as a successor to the FIA GT Championship which had featured the GT1 category as well as a GT2 category. In 2012 the series originally planned to move away from exclusive use of GT1 cars by allowing 2009-spec GT2 from the former FIA GT Championship as well as current performance balanced GT3 specification cars to compete alongside the series' current GT1 cars. However as there were no interested GT2 teams and only a handful of former GT1 runners were willing to participate, the SRO decided that the 2012 season would be contested with GT3-spec cars only (yet retaining GT1 in the series' title). The series folded after the 2012 season due to the high costs, shrinking car counts and issues with the calendar, and morphed into the FIA GT Series for 2013.
Group GT3
Group GT3, known technically as Cup Grand Touring Cars and commonly referred to as simply GT3, is a set of regulations maintained by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for grand tourer racing cars designed for use in various auto racing series throughout the world. The GT3 category was initially created in 2005 by the SRO Group as a third rung in the ladder of grand touring motorsport, below the Group GT1 and Group GT2 categories which were utilized in the SRO's FIA GT Championship, and launched its own series in 2006, the FIA GT3 European Championship. Since then, Group GT3 has expanded to become the de facto category for many national and international grand touring series, although some series modify the ruleset from the FIA standard. By 2013, nearly 20 automobile manufacturers have built or been represented with GT3 machines.
Group GT3 allows for a wide variety of car types to be homologated with almost no limit on engine sizes and configurations or chassis construction or layout. GT3 cars must be based on production road car models in mass production. Performance of all the Group GT3 cars are regulated, either by the GT Bureau of the FIA or by a series' specific ruling body, through a Balance of Performance that adjusts limits on horsepower, weight, engine management, and aerodynamics to prevent a single manufacturer from becoming dominant in the class. The cars in GT3 are designed to have a weight between 1200kg and 1300kg with horsepower between 500hp and 600hp. All cars have a very similar power to weight ratio but achieved either by high power and high weight such as the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG or low power and low weight such as the Porsche 911 GT3. GT3 cars also have traction control, ABS and built in air jacks for quick pit stops.
2008 FIA GT Championship
The 2008 FIA GT Championship season was the twelfth season of the FIA GT Championship. It featured a series for Grand Touring style cars broken into two classes based on power and manufacturer involvement, called GT1 and GT2. Invitational G2 and G3 classes were also allowed to participate but cars in these classes were not eligible to score points. The Championship began on 20 April 2008 and ended on 23 November 2008 after 10 rounds.
Schedule
The official 2008 calendar was released by the FIA on 24 October 2007. All races were two hours, with exception of the Spa 24 Hours and the Bucharest City Challenge, the latter being a combination of two one-hour races, each awarding half points. The Adria round remained as a night event and the Argentinian finale was the first South American race in FIA GT Championship history.
Season results
Teams championships
Points were awarded to the top 8 finishers in the order of 10–8–6–5–4–3–2–1 except at the Spa 24 Hours, where half points were also granted for the leaders after 6 and 12 hours. Both cars scored points towards the championship regardless of finishing position. The G2 class did not have a championship.
