As pointed out in the official announcement, this period of the championship is considered a golden age of GT racing, simply because of the raw power and aggressive nature of the wide variety of cars and engines. They were largely unfettered by electronic aids and with often the very slightest of nods to the road cars on which they were purportedly based.
Although the class had a few years yet left in it at this point — running as the top category at the Spa 24 Hours right up until 2010 — this era saw almost the peak participation, with a pretty varied grid that featured privateers outnumbering factory-backed efforts by a very healthy margin.
The top-class grid featured some of the biggest engines ever to head to a racing track, with the eight-liter Viper V10 the biggest among them. Lister’s seven-liter V12 Storm wasn’t far behind, joined in 2005 by the seven-liter V8 Corvette, not to mention the barely smaller Ford V8 in the Saleen. The six-liter Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati were the babies of the bunch.
Today’s announcement comes with images of several of these vehicles, confirming their appearances in Project Motor Racing. We can spot a trio of Saleen S7Rs — already confirmed a few weeks back — as well as the Lister Storm that’s been part of the game’s marketing from the start. The factory-backed black Storm is also joined by the blue Creation Autosportif machine.
Elsewhere in the images there’s a glimpse of the Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT and the Mosler MT900R — which wasn’t homologated for the FIA GT Championship class, but raced in a separate division where it couldn’t score points. Curiously that category also occasionally included the Gillet Vertigo, also previously announced for PMR, though it doesn’t appear in these images.
It’s not clear yet how wide-ranging the representation from the two seasons will be, but we have yet to see the Aston Martin DBR9, Corvette C5.R, Dodge Viper, Ferrari 550/575, and of course the division-conquering Maserati MC12.
There’s also a question of tracks. The circuit used for all these images is Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (better known as Mosport) which wasn’t a part of FIA GT — though the GT1s did race there in ALMS in both seasons (as GTS in 2004). Like Mosport, Lime Rock Park has already been announced for PMR, but also wasn’t on the FIA GT tour and staged ALMS events. The only other track definitively shown in-game so far is Kyalami, which didn’t host either series.
If PMR is looking to recreate the FIA GT1 series from the two years, it’d need at least another dozen tracks, ranging from Donington and Silverstone in the UK, to the UAE’s Dubai Autodrome and China’s Zhuhai — not to mention Brno, Imola, Magny-Cours, Monza, and Spa. Either way, we’ll be watching this space closely for more.
