RAM Racing is running two Mercedes-AMG GT3s this year, with its headline Pro-Am pairing being Ian Loggie and AMG superstar Jules Gounon, and a Silver-Am car for John Ferguson and aspiring professional Jamie Caroline.
RAM’s boss Dan Shufflebottom says: “The strength of GT3 is that it offers more than one thing to more than one person. If we look at Ian, who’s been a hugely successful businessman, he prefers to share with a world-class professional like Jules, who he can learn from and try to better himself. Then on the other side is Jamie in the Silver-Am car. His speed certainly isn’t in question as he’s won Ginetta Junior, British F4 and even British GT4 in the past, and those successes have earned him a chance in GT3. And now he’s sharing a garage with one of the best pros in the business [Gounon], which both gives him a performance benchmark and also an example as he should be watching how Jules executes a race weekend, in everything he does on and off rack. For a young driver, that’s a real learning experience if they aim for a professional career in GT racing.”
And therein lies another key to GT3’s success. While paid drives in single-seaters and touring cars are scarce at best, there are far more career opportunities in GT racing. British GT isn’t the end game for drivers like Caroline: it’s a stage to get noticed. Championships like the GT World Challenge Europe are bigger still, with more classes, global circuits and even tighter competition. Do well in British GT3 and there’s always the chance a European deal may follow, putting a young driver in front of all the major manufacturers.
The same goes for the amateur racers, too. Admittedly, some just prefer to race domestically (less time out of the office, no need for the faff of international travel…) but others use British GT as their own proving ground before heading off to GTWCE to take on the international field. Two-time British GT champion Andrew Howard is doing that this year, as is Loggie, who is running a dual campaign with RAM in British and GTWCE with the SPS Performance Mercedes-AMG team.
And then there’s the lower-cost GT4 field. Featuring less power and aero than the GT3 cars, these production racers are still mighty sports cars, just at a more accessible price point. Being more production-based, the components for GT4 cars are cheaper. So while they may still have the same big-capacity engine as their GT3 siblings, use the same number of tyres (similar size and cost, too) and burn the same amounts of fuel, the real budget difference lies in the cost per kilometre of running them – a figure calculated by taking literally everything into account, from how long a set of brakes pads will last to when the driveshafts need changing. The most expensive GT3 cars can hit above €30 per km to run, so about £180 for a single lap of Silverstone in layman’s terms. GT4s are nowhere near that.