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To be clear, the GT3 cars not became more expensive at all.
In 2006 you could buy an Aston Martin DBRS9 for 300.000 euro
In 2015 you could buy an Audi R8 LMS for 350.000 euro. With a starters and parts pack it comes about 400.000 euro.
The first GT3 cars were purely made for sprint racing, and even than they had troubles to even finishing an hour sprint race without issues. I remember the GT3 for the first time participating the 24 Hours of Spa, in which a GT3 team could enter three GT3 cars under one number. Every car would do 8 hours. Nowadays the GT3 cars can do a full season/endurance race as if it is a sprint race. In that case I think the extra costs is worth the money.
In contrary the environment of drivers / teams / facilities have become completly become different. This proffesionalism hasn't been a bad thing and also brought good things:
- Cars are more reliable, so basically lower running costs, less time on maintance
- Cars are run basically easier to run (more arrive and drive)
- A manufacturer has a spare parts truck at events, so teams not need to bring their own truck with spares and have a huge load of spares that all costst money.
The problem is, is that "customer sport" has been abused by certain brands. This has become kind of a cold war and an arms race and the privateer teams have become innocent victims of it, which is strange.
jjvincent can say GT3 needs to be dropped, and GT4 needs to take its place. But If a GT4 season in PWC is already on the same lever of a PWC GT3 season in 2014, than surely something fundamentally else is wrong than just pointing at the GT3 cars, also because a GT4 car its selling prize is around 200.000. So basically the running costs therefore of a GT4 in 2018 is higher than a more expensive GT3 in 2014. That doesn't make sense to me, and imo that is the blame of manufacturers abusing "customers sports".
What series possible can do is to change the sporting regulations. They should be able to deny entries if there is to much factory involvement in it.
- Land Motorsport basically abuses the silver driver rating (like a lot of other teams and series do). They not have a Keating or a Potter, they got a talented youngster behind the wheel who is a factory driver.
Maybe it looks like PWC has done a wrong decision to not allow factory GT3 involvement anymore. But this could in the end be a very good decision and this year maybe is only a transition year for that championship's GT3 classes that the heated budgets become slowly lower. During the season a lot of privateer GT3 teams might realize that this might be the series for them.
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