It is the final race of the year in the 2023 SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli. The Gulf 12 Hours at Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi. It is also the final iteration of this specific event for the foreseeable future with calendar changes coming for next year which means the championship will be back to a four-race format with two overseas races and two in Europe. The 2024 season will begin as tradition dictates "Down Under" in Australia with the running of the Repco Bathurst 12 Hours at Mount Panorama in February followed by two European races, and for the first time, SRO GT3 cars will be eligible to mix it up with their GT3 brethren from the Nurburgring Endurance ranks in the fabled 24 Hours of the Nurburgring at the Nordschleife. This is an odd choice especially considering the Nurburgring Endurance Series is in and of itself, its own GT3 championship, with other classes for GT4 and for production touring and sports cars that can be pigeonholed into the field.
I still wonder how the SRO is going to swing putting their cars into the race. The registration paperwork has to be a nightmare depending on what championship you are running in, what your manufacturer expects of you as a team, and which drivers from the manufacturer talent pool will be assigned to which teams and which cars, especially since the factory GT3 drivers also serve as factory prototype drivers for these same manufacturers even though in and of itself, the GT3 formula is meant for customer teams racing cars supplied by the different brands from across the globe which is set to explode in popularity come next year just as it has with the new cars we have seen and will continue to see.
We have Audi scaling back their efforts in a big way, but there are still brands out there who will want a piece of the pie with Mercedes-AMG, BMW, Ferrari, Honda/Acura, Chevrolet and General Motors with their new GT3 spec Corvette C8, Ford Motor Company with the new Mustang GT3, McLaren with an updated car in the form of their Evo version of the 720S GT3, Ferrari and Porsche upgrading their platforms with the 296 GT3 and 911 GT3R (992) respectively, and a brand new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 also on the way. Lexus, too, Toyota's luxury division, might be able to squeeze more life out of their RC F GT3 which has been in service now for eight or nine years.
What will the entry for the Nurburgring 24 look like if the GT3 class is split between the SRO teams and those registered under the Nurburgring's own championships as well as the ADAC, the German auto club? We'll have to wait and see about the Nurburgring. Beyond that, are the traditional races as part of SRO's canon with the 24 Hours of Spa being the blue riband event for both IGTC and GT World Challenge Europe, and the Indianapolis 8 Hours in the fall for IGTC and GT World Challenge America, being the season closer. This year has seen amazing racing, and no doubt the Gulf 12 Hours on Sunday will be no different.
Here is a program note. Catch all the action on the SRO GTWorld YouTube channel. Everything starts Saturday and then, carries over into the wee hours of Sunday, U.S. time. Qualifying will take place Saturday morning at 7:45 A.M. while the race is slated to begin in the wee small hours of Saturday night at 11:30 P.M. and carry on through the nighttime hours to the finish of the race on Sunday afternoon, our time. Odd hours, yes, but something worth being in insomniac mode for. The content of the field is small, but the quality is there. There is a 28-car entry list with five Pro-rated driving teams present. Well, I should not say small. If the entry is pushing 30 cars, which this one is, it is bound to be healthy.
The biggest talking point is the championship because BMW can win the whole enchilada if they play their cards right. There are manufacturer's and driver's crowns at stake. Sportscar365 has a whole article about this which will be posted in a news update later today. Bavarian Motorwerks will be racing hard against their rivals from Stuttgart, Germany, Mercedes-AMG for the title. The odd part about that, is even with their recent successes, BMW are yet to commit to the Intercontinental GT Challenge for the future, mainly because they have a lot of other sports car racing projects on their plate currently.
BMW will be taking the M4 GT3 to the FIA World Endurance Championship running it as a customer car in the new LMGT3 category, something else we have yet to talk about as the world of production-based sports car racing shifts away from the GT Endurance (GTE) format and towards customer-based GT3 race cars. They also will have their top GT3 team, WRT, led by Yves Weerts, Thierry Tassin, and Vincent Vosse, the man who always wears his signature flat hat on a race weekend, also entering the Hypercar category in the FIA WEC next year with two BMW M Hybrid V8 Hypercars, similar to those run by BMW Team RLL stateside in the IMSA WeatherTech championship. So, WRT has a lot on their plate with a Hypercar program and a GT3 program in FIA WEC and this is certainly why they are not sure about continuing with entries in IGTC competition, even though IGTC only has four races per seasons.
That's a lot of budgeting, preparation, and traveling throughout Europe and the world to cover the Hypercar team and the numerous GT3 efforts. Mercedes-AMG meanwhile will stick with the GT3 formula and mostly in SRO and in a handful of other championships, but not yet in World Endurance. Mercedes have Formula 1 as well and I don't believe they plan to do anything about prototype racing like they did in the late 1980s when they raced in the Group C prototype championship and claimed the ultimate prize of victory at the 1989 24 Hours of Le Mans. The BMW roundel and the three-pointed star of Mercedes will be duking it out for the title this Sunday.
The chef d'equipe at BMW Motorsport, Andreas Roos has made it clear that the company is still working on making the hard decision of what programs and projects to commit to with respect to their endurance sports car efforts. Do they dive headlong into the LMDh prototype effort? Do they find a balance between the prototype world and the world of GT3? As for Mercedes, they have seven entries total in the 28-car field compared to only two for BMW, with Porsche and the venerable 911 GT3R being represented by half a dozen cars, broken down between four of the new 992 iterations with two 991.II generation two 991 models, on the grid.
This also leaves Ferrari, split between the new and the old just like Porsche, with eight cars, with half a dozen of the new 296 GT3's and a couple of the older generation, but still competitive, 488 GT3's entered. McLaren, the venerable British marque with sports car and F1 glory to its name, they have four 720S GT3 Evo models in the race for two different teams. Incidentally, Porsche has five teams representing them, and Audi has one car. You will hear more about this when we get to the qualifying session on Saturday and then, the race in the late hours of Saturday night and the wee small hours of Sunday morning. All of the cars are sure to be covered and highlighted, just like always. But should you tune in for the race, we'll definitely be talking about the all-out scrap between BMW and Mercedes. That will be the one to watch. I can't wait for Sunday! Join us then.
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