BRITISH GT CHAMPIONSHIP

For more than 30 years, the British GT Championship has stood at the forefront of GT and sportscar racing in the UK, overseen by world-renowned GT racing promoters SRO Motorsport with assistance from the BRSCC and pitting high-performance GT3 and GT4 race cars against each other on track together.

British GT can trace its roots back to the days of the BRDC National Sports GT Challenge which began in 1993 and since then it’s come a long way from the days when Porsches, Ford Escort Cosworths and Jaguar XJ220s were regular entries. Charging through an iconic era when GT1 and GT2 cars dominated the grids, marques such as Porsche, McLaren, Lister, Jaguar, TVR, Lotus and Marcos provided a thumping soundtrack over the years, but when costs escalated in its latter seasons, the switch to GT3 in 2004 thanks to then new promoters SRO proved to be a wise and successful decision, and British GT continues to run and thrive under the GT3/ GT4 class structure to this day.

The GT3 and GT4 regulations allow a wide range of manufacturers to compete against one another. For example, in 2023 there were no less than 8 different marques represented across both classes, proving just how diverse a British GT can be at all times. In addition, top drivers from continental Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East regularly feature on the grid to test their skills against the best talent the British Isles has to offer.

Both classes race on track together at the same time and race formats vary throughout the season, with some weekends featuring a pair of 60-minute “sprint” races, while others typically last between two to three hours, with mandatory pitstops, driver changes, refuelling and tyre changes. Pit stop success penalties are also applied based on results from the previous race, meaning the competition always stays close and unpredictable.

British GT visits some of the finest circuits in the UK such as Silverstone for its annual centrepiece 500-mile race, Donington Park which usually acts as the final round each year, Brands Hatch, Oulton Park and Snetterton. It has also become something of a tradition for the championship to feature one international round, typically at venues such as Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, or Autodromo Internacional Algarve in Portugal, which the championship visited for the first time in 2023.