In the latest issue of AUTO ACTION, Andrew Clarke talks to Roland Dane about the logical future of GT4 racing in Australia, and it’s march towards developing into a standalone category…
Roland Dane may no longer technically be steering the ship at Triple Eight Race Engineering, but he has thrown his weight behind the GT4 class that will scale up in Australia over the next year before getting a standalone championship.
Dane says it is the logical production car class moving forward and will threaten all production-based formulae, including Class X and TCR in Australia.
“I think what’s held GT4 back in this country so far is that the cars have only been able to run with GT3, and the guys running GT4 don’t like the fact that they have to look in the mirrors all the time,” he said. “In plenty of other markets, they’ve separated the two so that GT4 can have its own proper space, and in many places, they’ve got very healthy grids of GT4 cars.
Roland Dane believes GT4 is the way to go. Image: Jack Martin Photography
“GT4 is probably the sort of production based that’s the future of production car racing. There’s certainly no future in all these hatchbacks and everything else. The aspirational cars are things like the Supra, the Mustang, the M4, the AMG and the Cayman, and that will take GT4 forwards.
“These Class X cars will gradually get replaced by GT4 because a Class X car is effectively a GT4 car that’s been built by a local tuning company that has got nowhere near the resources of the manufacturers. You see the Class X BMWs conking out after four laps because it’s hard to get into the electronics and master them properly if you’re not the manufacturer, whereas the manufacturers can make these cars work as race cars and deliver them as a finished article to customers.”
He said a GT4 car is relatively affordable, and the maintenance and running costs will appeal to weekend and amateur racers. A GT4 Mercedes-AMG costs around $350,000 to buy from Triple Eight, and it will run for 20,000 kilometres before it needs any serious maintenance. A Mustang, he said, would cost less…
The Ford Performance GT4 race car shares its key DNA with the road cars that are built on the production line, so repair and replacement parts for the racer are based on a lot of production-based components.
To find out more about what Roland had to say on GT4, including his take on sustainable and carbonless fuels grab the latest issue of Auto Action online or in your newsagency.
