We’ve seen the start of several of the major Series and Championships for 2014 already this season but next weekend sees the start of three more – and DSC, of course, will be at all three in force.
The British GT Championship looks set for a year of further progress with a grid unmatched by any other national GT Championship. Variety, quality and, with the customer Bentleys and the arrival of Sir Chris Hoy to the fray, novelty too – This correspondent is looking forward to this so much that I will be doing something very, very unusual for the first round at Oulton Park on Easter Monday, going to watch it! I’d urge as many of you as possible to join me!
The European Le Mans Series gets underway at Silverstone on Saturday with another step forward from the dark days of just a couple of seasons ago. A high quality LMP2 field with the quality of drivers taking another big leap forward. The GT field has improved dramatically in numbers and in depth too, both in GTE and GTC.
The weather forecast for the weekend promises a softer landing for the ELMS teams than 2013 presented, monsoon like conditions ruining a promising start. A great race on Saturday will raise the game, set a standard, and get the Endurance Super Racing Weekend off to a flier.
Then on Easter Sunday we’ll see the start of the 2014 FIA World Endurance Championship.
If this is really the start of a new golden era for sportscar racing then the WEC will be the torch-bearer. And some of the signs at least are very good.
Gerard Neveu told us last week that more tickets had already been sold for Silverstone than had been sold by the END of the opening weekend last season.
Friday will see the launch of a new FIA WEC ‘App’ which praises to give new and in-depth access to live data, live cameras and commentary than ever before, at home, or trackside. That kind of approach is going to be needed if the core audience is going to be grown, as it should.
And on track it really is a brave new world for LMP1 with new rules, new cars and new contenders Porsche joining the Toyota vs Audi battle for overall race and Championship honours.
Mark Webber makes it 11 ex F1 drivers in the field but perhaps more significantly still the numbers now graduating to the WEC (and the ELMS) from the upper reaches of the single seater feeding frenzy show that the ‘Hartley Syndrome’ is in full flow, the ex Murphy Prototypes man having seen his career blossom with the Porsche factory team after some years of looking for a way through the mire – Others would love to follow in his footsteps, and his wheel tracks – and the blossoming of the sportscar racing field looks set to see others do exactly that in the years to come.
