JONNY ADAM THE MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN

In assisting our shout for questions for this latest Motorsport News readers’ Q&A, British GT’s social media accounts declared that our subject Jonny Adam is, using the modern parlance, the championship’s ‘GOAT’. Not the insult it may seem to the uninitiated, rather it ranks him as its Greatest Of All Time.

It’s hard to argue. The factoryAston Martin driver has four – or, as we are to discover, perhaps four-and-a-half – British GT overall GT3 championships, as well as two Le Mans 24 Hour GT class victories, all accumulated inAstons across recent seasons. He added to his Le Mans win total this year, and just missed out on the World Endurance Championship title in the Bahrain finale round just passed.

Yet, as is also revealed by the readers’enquiries, there’s much more toAdam besides and not just in his driving. So let’s feed the goat with our first question.

Question: What makes GT3 racing so special?

ag_supercars Via Instagram Jonny Adam: “The formula of it is well put together. You’ve got potentially anywhere between 12 and 14 or 15 manufacturers that have now developed GT3 cars over a good number of years, so it’s quite special to watch it blossom over the years.And you could take that model, GT3, and race it anywhere in the world.

“You see how strong the grids are, especially in Europe still even with Covid impacting quite a few championships.GT World Challenge for example is still strong and healthy and Spa was an indication of that, the 24-hour race this year.

“And the cars are great fun to drive. They’ve got proper amounts of downforce, they’re quick, well over 500-and-odd bhp. The cars seem to get quicker every year, every team squeezes the last little bit of performance out the cars.

“The nice thing about it all is that you could have any manufactured car and you’re going to be competitive because of the BoP [Balance of Performance] system.All across the world BoP is a good formula to make it a level playing field so it’s down to the driver, it’s down to set-up and more importantly down to the team in the pits to eke out that performance.

“And the cars, they’re pretty special now. Since I first drove one for the first time in 2011, which was anAston Martin DBRS9, the car has massively come on. We went through two versions now of the shorter wheelbase Vantage and the car’s definitely a lot faster on lap time, through different elements as well. So it’s a great class and a class that’s looking like it’s healthy and hopefully it is going to stay like that for a good few years.” When you first drove a GT3 car in