[FIA GT] FIA GT Eligible Cars

[racer69]

Is the Corvette, Marcos and so on eligible for the FIA GT Championship. I Know that Atomic Kitten Motorsport has a few GTS Corvettes and a GT3 Corvette, but why aren't they being used in the FIA GT. Same with the Marcos, Calum Lockie deserve's a go at the FIA series after winning the British series. The FIA can't rely on all those second hand Viper's to take the fight up to two Lister's. The Ferrari's are coming along slowly, but the Porsche's and Lambo's are uncompetitive.

Imagine if the series had Lister, New Model Viper, Corvette, Ferrari, Marcos, Lamborghini, New Model Porsche and Saleen in the top class, while in N-GT have Porsche, Ferrari 360, New BMW and the Atomic Kitten Racing Corvette GT3, the championship would be awesome and just as good as the series was in 1997.

Is the FIA series staying with the ETC next year as the Super racing Weekend package.

[pink69]

The corvette works team have been critised because the C5R's are too noisy. They would be eligable but a privateer team would find it hard to cure this problem. on the Vipers, they won't want to diversify their efforts on building racing spec vipers while they are trying to win Le Mans and they can get ORECA working on the cars , so don't expect the new Vipers until 2003 at the earliest.

[Hans.ca]

Just a dumb question. I noticed the name Marcos, is that the same make of car that used to be built out of plywood? Would you have a picture and some info that sombody could post please.
I took a picture of a Marcos in about 1959 that rolled at Harewood Acres and the driver was still straped to the seat sitting in the middle of the track while the rest of the car totaly disintigrated.

[Speedworx]

The Marcos is not egilable for the FIA GT Championship. As far as i know, the Corvettes are ok. How about having the Stealth B6 from the ISC?

[briano]

Hans

if U want to see a Marcos, my old car is shown on www.pistonheads.com
click on 'fast cars', click on 'Marcos mantis SC'. After the intercooler was fitted it produced around 480 bhp. The engine is a Mustang Cobra 4.6 V8 with Vortech supercharger.

The LM600s run in the UK PI GT series with 6lt. 'smal block' Chevy engines. The most famous of the LMs is Cor Euser's LM600 Evo, which came 5th overal at Suzuka last year (1st in the International class) and enabled Calum Lockie to win the 2000 PI GT series. However, it was rejected as having too many body panels by the FIA and is currently too wide to enter Le Mans; a narrow body version may be developed to run at LM next year.

Marcos last ran at Lm in 1996.

[Hans.ca]

Briano

Thank you, it is a beautifull looking car and as soon as I win the lotterie I will put in an order together with a 911 Porche.
The one that disintigrated at Harewood Acres was nothing like it, I think it was probably about 1100 or 1500 cc. they told me at the time that the builders where ex Spitfire builders and that is why the plywood. I'm not sure if this is correct or not but at the time it was a good story

[Marshal]

Originally posted by Hans.ca
Briano

Thank you, it is a beautifull looking car and as soon as I win the lotterie I will put in an order together with a 911 Porche.
The one that disintigrated at Harewood Acres was nothing like it, I think it was probably about 1100 or 1500 cc. they told me at the time that the builders where ex Spitfire builders and that is why the plywood. I'm not sure if this is correct or not but at the time it was a good story

Hans, it is the same company, although neither Jem Marsh nor Frank Costin are part of the company any more. Costin was an aerodynamisist who worked for De Havillands during the war, so had experience in Plywood construction from the Mosquito. The Spitfire was Aluminium.

I think he was behind a plywood F2 car in the 60's too, the Modus???

The original (ugly duckling) Marcos was powered by a Climax 1100cc engine as I recall, and raced by Jackie Stewart amongst others.

[briano]

The cars changed very little over the years; the wooden chassis went, the engines went from 1lt Ford, various BMC engines, 2Lt Volvos then 3lt Ford V6. Then they started to get serious about power and the 3.5 Rover (ex-Buick) engines came, gradually gaining in size until the LM500. In 1995 it evolved into the racing only LM600 (there is one road car for homologation purposes; two of these raced at Le Mans in 1995. Th LM500 and LM600 have been highly sucessful in UK GT racing. I mentioned Cor Euser's LM600 Evo, which sometimes runs a 7Lt engine, in sprint rather than endurance races.

For road cars the Cobra engined Mantis (320 bhp) replaced the LM500; mine was the second factory supercharged car (480bhp). Finally they produced the Mantis GT with 506bhp, all in a car weighing some 1200kg.

Mantis race in Challenge (4.6) spec and GTO (5.0) GT3 form.

What did not change was the cockpit area of the car, OK it gained a/c and was coated in leather but the dimensions ar almost identical to the 1960s cars. However, the front and rear gained massive humps and bulges to accommodate ever larger engines, cooling systems, wheels and brakes.

My Marcos was just the most fun car I ever owned, more so than a Countach and other great eotica.

[mickj]

Marshal The Frank Costin F2 was a Protos and run by the Ron Harris team
mickj

[Marshal]

Originally posted by mickj
Marshal The Frank Costin F2 was a Protos and run by the Ron Harris team
mickj

Cheers, I thought Modus was wrong but I thought it sounded a bit like that Do you know if there are left in existance?