Today, the Spa 24 Hours is the premier GT3 event on the sports‑car calendar, but its roots go back much further. After its revival in 1964, the race remained a touring‑car staple for almost 50 years.
The distinction between touring cars and GTs was often blurred. Porsche’s 911 took three Spa victories in the 1960s, and the 1981 Mazda RX‑7’s win could be argued as either a touring‑car or GT achievement. The 1991 victory of Nissan’s Skyline GT‑R R32 “Godzilla” over BMW’s M3 E30s also sits in a grey area of classification.
Despite such grey‑area victories, Spa remained the flagship touring‑car race and the ETCC’s marquee event from 1966 to 1988.
The race continued to attract top manufacturers after the ETCC folded, notably BMW with its legendary Bastos‑sponsored M3 E30.
By the 1990s Spa’s prestige had slipped. After Group A ended, organisers tried to make GT racing the focus in 1993.
GT racing was still amateurish; only the Porsche 911 RSR was a true works car, and most entries were private, unreliable builds. A Porsche‑only cup did little to draw crowds.
In 1994 the RACB banned GTs and reverted to touring cars, a decision echoed by the Nürburgring 24 Hours organisers.
Super Touring replaced Group A. Though technically less advanced, the formula worked early on, and BMW dominated with a full‑factory programme.
“The Super Touring cars became more and more sophisticated, but they were increasingly developed for sprint racing. As a result, they became very expensive,” Stephane Ratel told Motorsport.com.
With championships like the BTCC capturing global headlines, manufacturers – with the notable exception of the BMW 320i – tuned their packages strictly for short sprint formats. “There were many manufacturers, but the cars simply weren’t designed to last for 24 hours,” Ratel said.
Low grid numbers in 1997 prompted the RACB to retreat. They introduced Group N and Superproduction regulations to boost entries.
From 1998‑2000 the change swelled the field, delivering the grassroots touring‑car feel Super Touring had promised, but it also introduced a new issue.
Spectators were turned off by the weak, showroom‑car based field, capped at only 220 hp. “It looked like everyday cars running for 24 hours,” Ratel noted.
The Century Gamble
After Peugeot’s twin wins in 1999 and 2000, the RACB grew uneasy with the race’s declining pace. In a gamble that would redefine Spa, they reached out to the SRO Motorsports Group.
The touring‑car era was about to end, opening the door to GT racing’s golden age.
“In 2000, the organizer at the time, the RACB, and the promoter that was organizing it for the RACB came to see us and asked if we would like to come with GT racing,” Ratel said.
SRO’s timing was perfect; GT racing had professionalised quickly, but the original GT1 class had collapsed under cost pressures.
The FIA GT Championship’s secondary tier—featuring Dodge Viper GTS‑R, Lister Storm and Porsche 911 GT2—was far more compelling than Superproduction and offered a professional foundation. Using Spa as GT racing’s crown jewel seemed the obvious choice.
Ratel said: “Of course, we were delighted because that’s really what we needed. Every important category has a headline event, IndyCars at the Indy 500, sports cars at Le Mans, and back in the old days, Formula 1 at Monaco. Every category needs a real big event that is the headline of the season. So taking Spa immediately became the most important milestone.”
Convincing the Paddock
Logistical planning was one challenge, but attracting entries was another. GT cars at the time were built for 500 km or three‑hour endurance, not 24 hours.
“We also had to convince our teams because we were doing three‑hour, four‑hour endurance races, and to go and tell them they have to go for 24 hours with all the additional costs going with it. It was not an easy transition,” Ratel said.
SRO pressed ahead, making Spa a FIA GT round from 2001 with double points. Reliability over 24 hours proved a huge early challenge.
The 2003 race is famed for Freisinger’s modest Porsche 996 GT3 RS (N‑GT class) outlasting the top‑tier cars, winning by eight laps.
GT racing proved the only sustainable path. Spa regained global prestige, FIA GT found its flagship event, teams gained exposure, and fans returned to see high‑performance GTs on the legendary circuit.
A further shake‑up occurred in 2010 when GT1 became the GT1 World Championship, a project that proved unsustainable.
GT2 also faltered; insufficient entries led ACO to rebrand it as GTE, which ran until 2023.
New Promoter, New Heights
The booming GT3 class offered a solution. After successful GT transition, RACB gave SRO full control of promotion and operation.
“And now we promote entirely the event, and it has become undoubtedly the biggest GT race in the world. It’s really an extraordinary event,” Ratel said. “It’s the only grid of 70‑plus cars of a single category where only the drivers make the difference.
“You could take the drivers of the car which is on pole to put them in the car which is last on the grid, and they could win the race. It really only comes down to the drivers. And the only classes we have are just based on what we call the driver categorisation.
“But out of the 70‑plus cars, you usually have about 25 that are Pro cars, and most of them are supported directly or indirectly by car manufacturers.
“So you have about eight manufacturers officially entered, a number matched only at Le Mans. Le Mans and Spa are the two races in the world where you have the largest number of drivers paid by a manufacturer on the grid.
Now 3‑8 cars (often 5‑8) finish together after 24 h, racing lap‑by‑lap with finishes decided by seconds. “In the early days endurance was dull; one car would be a few laps ahead and then nothing else happened,” Ratel recalled. “If you look at the last 10 years, every year we had between three and eight cars, and more often five to eight cars, on the same lap after 24 hours. It is a sprint from beginning to end with a margin at the finish of just a few seconds. It’s really so highly disputed. And the result is that over the last six editions, we had six different brands winning.”
Today, the Spa 24 Hours operates at a level of professionalism that completely eclipses even the most celebrated touring car eras of its past. Looking back, the visionary gamble taken in the summer of 2000 has paid off for the entire motorsport world.