Blancpain GT Series celebrates 10 years of GT3 at Silverstone

Blancpain GT Series celebrates 10 years of GT3 at Silverstone
The Blancpain GT Series celebrated a decade of GT3 racing this evening by honouring the same three teams still competing in SRO’s flagship Endurance Cup that also contested the inaugural standalone championship 10 years ago.
 
Then, as now, Barwell Motorsport, AF Corse and AKKA ASP (then known as SOFREV - Auto Sport Promotion) all travelled to Silverstone for the FIA GT3 European Championship, and first ever races held exclusively for GT3-spec machinery, on 5/6 May 2006. Hector Lester and the late Allan Simonsen won the opener before Stefano Livio and Andrea Ceccato emerged victorious from the second.
 
The formula proved an overnight success with a grand total of 51 cars signed up for the inaugural season, 42 of which participated in the first round. No fewer than eight manufacturers - Ascari, Aston Martin, Corvette, Dodge, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini and Porsche - were represented at Silverstone that year.
 
A number of the same drivers competing this weekend were also on the grid that day, including Leo Machitski who will be racing for Barwell this weekend just as he did at Silverstone 10 years ago.
 
Mark Lemmer, who has been at Barwell’s helm since that first race, remembers the cars being a far cry from their modern counterparts.
 
“GT3 has changed out of all recognition since we were first here in 2006,” he said. “It was fantastic to be a part of that race weekend; even then we knew the category would evolve into something special. The timing was perfect. 
 
“However, the cars were very different to what we’re running now. I remember our fabulous Prodrive-built Aston Martin DBRS9s had manual gearboxes and five-stud wheels! I think they only lasted one round before Prodrive upgraded the cars with sequential ‘boxes and a single centre-locking nut when we all realised how serious GT3 was.
 
“Those cars weren’t quite where we wanted them to be but we got better as the season progressed. It was the start of a real adventure. But my main memory of Silverstone 2006 was watching the fantastic GT3 grid assemble. We hadn’t seen anything like that before. It was a big entry with huge diversity. We felt like we were on to something and time has definitely proven that to be the case.”