HOW STEPHANE RATEL MADE THE SPORTSCAR SCENE GO LIKE CLOCKWORK
It was a category that took GT racing back to its roots and became known by its sponsor name rather than its full title. The Blancpain Endurance Series was a success right from the start and, under its new guise of GT World Challenge Europe for 2021, it is still booming.
There isn’t much that category guru Stephane Ratel gets wrong in GT racing.
Even the things that aren’t prefect help shape something else successful. It was while he was running the FIAGT1 World Championship in 2010 that the seeds were sown for the Blancpain Endurance Series.
As the sprint-based series ran two one-hour races, something else was needed for the blue-riband Spa 24 Hours and a non-championship race was run for GT2 cars (that were meant to have their own European championship but it never gained enough support) plus GT3 and GT4 machinery.Although the GT2 cars, few in number, disputed the win, Ratel saw enough potential in the
