Let's celebrate the rich history of the Gentlemen Driver
Mercedes-AMG Launches its GT2
The gentleman driver is not a recent phenomenon and has a long history in sportscar racing, one could make a strong argument that the gentleman driver was invented a few minutes after the first car was sold. Stereotypically, the gentleman driver has been thought of as a bunch of guys who have more money than common sense. But let me tell you why you should be excited about the gentlemen drivers, sometimes referred to as pay drivers if you’re an F1 snob fan, and what they have done for the sport.
One of the earliest gentleman drivers was English tobacconist, entrepreneur, and inventor Alfred Dunhill. Dunhill had inherited his business from his father and shortly thereafter caught the motoring bug and started to supply accessories for motor cars under the name Dunhill's Motorities.
Some of the richest histories of the sport can be attributed to the likes of Joel Woolf Barnato, the heir to a fortune from South African diamond mines, better known as one of the original Bentley Boys. The Bentley Boys were larger-than-life characters equally as famous for their racing as for their womanizing and champagne drinking. A few years after purchasing a Bentley, Barnato won a £100 bet while partying on a yacht near Cannes that he could drive his 6½-litre Bentley Speed Six to England before Le Train Bleu reached Calais.**
They were a part of the laissez-faire hedonistic post-WW1 generation, or as Hemmingway called them The Sun Also Rises, “a lost generation”. Most of them had served in the first world war and had the emotional scaring to go with it and in need of an outlet from their pain.
Fast forwarding a century of motorsport and today we have the likes of Charlie Luck, Ben Keating, George Kurtz, and let us not forget Michael Fassbender. Men of fame and wealth who are also self-made and have spent millions of their own money on their dream to drive fast competitively for tack glory, the modern-day gentlemen racers.
They could have bought an NFL team, but instead, they invested in the sport that we love so it can exist. Let us face it, without their money, sportscar racing would not exist as we know it today; it would be smaller and less accessible. And with that investment, like the Bentley Boys, has added spice to a series that would otherwise be overlooked by casual fans in lieu of IMSA and WEC. And we as fans get a deeper connection, knowing that the only thing that sits between us and track glory is a few bucks. So let us appreciate the Gentleman driver more and live vicariously through them!
So, we should be very excited then about Mercedes-AMG official announcement of its 4-Liter 707hp V8-powered GT2 beast-car available for customer racing teams. The new Mercedes-AMG GT2 was developed to the GT2 technical regulations of the Stéphane Ratel Organisation (SRO) in mind for the gentleman racer in mind. The SRO has been keen for Mercedes-AMG to homologate its GT Track Series model for the upcoming racing series, expanding the number of available manufacturers for the class.
The GT2 class is aimed at the amateur pay drivers in the FIA Bronze-rated category where the use of downforce and aero packages cannot be fully utilized usually due to driver skill. Although the GT2 is numerically lower than GT3 and GT4, the class slots in between these two classes despite its name. The GT2 class focuses primarily on more powerful engines with 640-700hp, which is more powerful than a 560hp GT3 engine while having low downforce more like the GT4 category.
The GT2 class was announced in 2018 by Stephane Ratel. At the class announcement, he explained that the new GT2 class was in response to the continuing development of the GT3 category, where the focus was more on the professional driver and not the amateur.
"The evolution of GT3 with more and more downforce has made them more out-and-out racecars that are difficult to drive for the amateur,” he said.
"The 'ams' are disappearing - we have zero amateurs in the BGTS Sprint Cup, for example.
"We are welcoming more powerful cars, supercars, that don't need major modifications for racing, but can still be developed into extremely exciting racecars."*
The first race to use the GT2 category was at the 2019 24 Hours of Spa as a single-make event using the Porsche 911 GT2 RS Clubsport along with the Porsche 935s. Later in the same season at the GT Sports Club finale in Barcelona, the Audi R8 LMS GT2 saw its racing debut.
The class would see continued interest and expansion by manufacturers and amateur drivers alike the next season in 2020 when KTM launched the X-bow and Lamborghini the Huracan Super Trofeo GT2 into the GT2 fray.
The GT2 class should see continued growth in the next few years as Maserati MC20 GT2, announced at the 2022 24 Hours of Spa, is expected to join the Mercedes-AMG in the GT2 European series in 2023.
* GT2 name revived for new SRO GT category aimed at amateurs (autosport.com)