I’m part of a group of girls who all love racing, but we don’t all have the same interests within the sport. Some prefer motorbike races, while others (like me) lean towards car races. Some prefer to watch single seaters, while others have a soft spot for endurance events. Within my group of friends I’m probably a bit of an odd-one-out, because my main interest lies with GT cars. Or, as my friends call them, “cars with a roof”.
It’s not always easy to have a group of friends with such varied interests. For one thing, we always struggle to plan a race visit with the entire group, because invariably not everybody will be equally interested in attending the event. Luckily, though, diversity also has its advantages. It’s an ideal opportunity to learn about new things. For example, my friends have taught me the basics of motorbike racing. Some years ago they even dragged me along to a British Superbikes event. Bike racing’s still not my thing, but it was great to get a taste of the atmosphere.
Of course it’s not just my friends influencing me. I do a good deal of influencing my friends as well – and by “influencing” I mean I shower them in unsolicited GT racing propaganda. I’m forever trying to get my friends to watch it. The results so far have been mixed, but I’ve gotten one friend hooked on GT Masters and another is now very keen to take a bigger interest in GT3 races after I dragged her to Germany last year to see VLN. My current mission is to get the latter friend to watch the Blancpain GT Series. It has big fields, close grids, fierce competition, and both sprint and endurance races. It’s ideal to get started, if you ask me.
Yesterday my ongoing promo campaign reaped its first results. My friend decided to sit down and watch last weekend’s qualifying race on the Nürburgring. Afterwards I immediately rushed up to her to ask her what she thought of it. I’m glad to say that she enjoyed the race! But at the same time I’m also somewhat humbled to admit she stumbled across a characteristic of the series that could possibly be problematic for new fans.
“So, what did you think?!”
“It was really fun! But it could’ve been better.”
“Really? How?”
“It would’ve been even more fun if it had been easier to tell the cars apart. Now I kept muddling everything.”
“Was it really that bad?”
“Yes! I wanted to follow Nico Müller’s race, but I could barely even recognise him!”
“I can sort of get that. WRT has six cars in this series.”
“Six?!”
“Yeah, and they all look pretty much identical.”
“And you wonder why I got confused…”
“But Nico is in car number 4, if that helps. He has teamed up with Vanthoor.”
“Laurens?”
“No, Dries. Laurens’ younger brother. You can really tell they’re family if you look at his face.”
“Great. So there are six near-identical WRT cars and two near-identical Vanthoors?!”
“Yes. Kind of…”
“Originality in sport isn’t a crime, you know.”
“Say that to the Belgians. Most others in Blancpain are relatively easy to tell apart.”
“True. The Nissan is easy.”
“Bless the Japanese.”
I know it’s one of those fiddly-tiny tid-bit problems, but my friend does have a point. The more GT cars a team is entering into a race, the more homogenous a GT grid tends to look. If you’re a regular viewer, that’s not a problem; but if you’re a newcomer, it could be discouraging. Although of course it could also be seen as a challenge, since recognising cars on livery colours alone is somewhat of a right-of-passage for many fans. Still, I personally wouldn’t mind if WRT became a bit more like my group of friends, with some more shades and some more colours, and generally more diversity.