THE ANATOMY OF A LE MANS GT CAR

FEW COMBINATIONS IN MOTORSPORT HISTORY are more evocative than ‘Ferrari’ and ‘Le Mans’. The company made its name there, in part, by winning the first post-war race in 1949, and Enzo Ferrari considered a good performance by his cars in the 24 Hours vital throughout the ’50s, ’60s and into the early ’70s. From there the marque played more of a supporting role, with Daytonas and then Berlinetta Boxers in the GT class; when it returned for outright glory it was as an engine supplier to the factory Lancia squad in the Group C era of the 1980s.

When Group C fizzled out in the early ’90s, GT cars returned to front sportscar racing as a more affordable, privateer-based formula, and early contenders included 348-based and then F355 racing machines, as well as crowd-pleasing F40s at the front of the field. However, as the emergent BPR series and the Le Mans 24 Hours evolved into the FIA-run World GT Championship, the recipe soon soured, first after Porsche’s appearance with the 911 GT1, and then Mercedes-Benz with the CLK GT1. In particular, the Merc, effectively a pure racing car and backed by a colossal budget, was beyond what any rival factory team or privateer squad could afford to compete against. Even Ferrari, who had begun development of an F50-based GT1 contender, was deterred from a direct confrontation and quietly sold off the F50 test cars.

So for 1999 the short-lived GT1 category would be axed, and the GT Championship effectively run with GT2-spec cars as its premier category. For series promoter Stéphane Ratel and his SRO company – the former the ‘R’ in the BPR series – running an international championship with little more than