FIA GT Championship

The FIA GT Championship was a sports car racing series for grand touring cars, organised by the Stephane Ratel Organisation at the request of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile. It was concentrated mostly in Europe but also visited Asia and South America. The FIA took control of the BPR Global GT Series in 1997, standardised race length at 500 km and loosened the technical rules, leaving commercial running to Stephane Ratel. Cars were production-based grand tourers split into classes, first GT and N-GT and later GT1 and GT2, with a GT3 class introduced in 2006, and performance was balanced with weights and restrictors. The Spa 24 Hours joined the calendar after the N-GT class arrived in 2000 and became the series' most important race. Races were originally endurance events of at least 500 km or up to three hours, though the 2007 rules moved toward shorter sprint races apart from Spa. At the end of 2009 the championship was replaced by the FIA GT1 World Championship, which became the FIA GT Series for 2013.