grand touring motor racing
while modern audiences may know GT racing thanks to the video game gran turismo, the sport of GT racing actually goes a long way back.

the world sports car championship featured some of the greatest machinery driven by the greatest drivers of its era. legendary cars such as jaguar's E and D types, ferrari's 250 GTO and ford's GT40 roared all over world-famous tracks such as spa, sebring, the nurburgring and, of course, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
in the late 1960s, however, the FIA changed the regulations for the WSC, with the most visible and important of those changes being the introduction of two classes: prototypes and GT.
as the 70s arrived, the WSC established a championship for the GT Class in order to encourage manufacturers to compete. sensing a great business opportunity to sell their high performance road cars, many of the world's top manufacturers offered their latest sports cars for the various teams, with Porsches 911 eventually becoming the dominant car, winning almost every championship in the GT category in the 70s, with Lancia's stratos, BMW's and lamborghini's Countach being its only challengers.
however, costs were rising rapidly, and the FIA opted to completely change their specification for their groups in 1982.
the new groups would all be named after letters of the alphabet. touring cars were now named group A, while prototypes were now known as group C.

and finally, GT Cars Were now known as Group B. while the tracks of the world would wait before the group B cars would race, the Rallies around the world witness a huge surge in popularity, with many of the top manufacturers filling the grids with roaring beasts that spit almost 500HP thanks to the loose regulations and the favorable homologation rules: only 200 examples sold allowed for any car wishing to enter!
sensing a lot of potential in the group B cars, the FIA has decided, during a meeting in winter 1982, to organise the first ever Gran turismo world championship, to be run in 1983 using group B regulations. during the official announcement, the FIA announced the provisionary schedule for the inaugural season, featuring standalone races as well as partnership with the WSC and IMSA:
PROVISIONARY SCHEDULE
24 hrs of Daytona
Sebring 12 Hrs
tecate Mexico 3hrs
Sao Paulo 6hrs
mille miglia di monza
trofeo dino ferrari at mugello
jerez
Watkins glen 6 hrs
nurburgring 24 hrs
24 heure du mans
spa 24 hrs
Silverstone 3 hrs
Fuji 1000km
suzuka 1000km
hockenheim
kyalami 3 hrs
7 heures de Paul ricard, france
the FIA also revealed a brand new logo for their new championship.
OOC: so yeah, this has been a long dream of mine.
I always dreamed of a GT world championship. as a kid, I've always been fascinated with the game gran turismo, as it didn't feature purpose built race cars like formula 1 or CART, but real cars that you could see on the road! the idea of seeing which road car was the fastest prompted me to develop this concept, and I am ready to share it all with you!
also, feel free to give me tips and ideas on cars, races and regulations...yknow, everything!
up next is the car list for the 1983 season!
see ya at the track!