There is a history of dominance in recent years in the MSA TORA GT Championship.

In 2009, the PLOW team took the community by force with strong cars in the Touring Car and the GT series, only beaten at the end by ATR DAN. In 2010, WWR Chillz led the series from start to finish, and the first season in 2011 saw PLOW TheButcher return to take the series win. Season 7 was the season of the BMW M3, helping F4H MOPAR001 take a very convincing championship and Season 8, as see on TORA TV, was the year PLOW take the series again, this time with PLOW RUN WIDE making his stamp in the series history books.

With season 9 just round the corner, a complete overhaul of the series making use of fully specification race cars, and with the big prize at stake for whoever is crowned GT champion in December in the form of a free racing cockpit, there is alot of excitement in the TORA paddock.

And alot of rumours too.



The caliber of teams who have expressed interest in the series this year, and in particular interest in winning themselves a racing cockpit courtesy of GT Omega Racing has certainly raised a few eyebrows. F4H, PLOW and ATR have all taken previous GT championships, and all look set to return this season. CQR, many of whom came from the old WWR team, also have expressed joining this season, possibly with more than a single team.

Tonight though, none of the above teams took a major part at this particular test session, but the history of dominance looked set to continue, for this session anyways. FMS BriSCA and FMS Jezza broke out the BMW M3 GT2 and were instantly setting laptimes just under a second quicker than anybody else. This seemed to be the theme of the evening, as team members of the British Gamers, STORM, as well as R1CARDOUK, lfcnicklfc and many more tried to chase after their times.

footage part 1 from the test


Each time someone improved their time to bring the gap down to under half a second, the FMS guys just edged out a further 2 tenths of a second. All the other teams and drivers were scratching their heads and admiring in awe of how this team were managing such times Once the testing parade reached Mugello speculation began, as it always does, that the BMW M3 GT2 must be the quickest car, and the dominant cars for the series. This was until the FMS team both got out of one German marque, and started lapping in the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, and again were about a second quicker than the rest of the field, quashing the theory on the BMW.

footage part 2 from the test


It seems to be a reoccurring theme, where people start to look out for the car which looks to be dominant. Once people feel they have found the dominant car in the field, they test another car which feels better, then another and then another. The M3 has shown strong pace, but also up there seems to be the Mercedes, the Ford, Ferrari and the Z4. Corvette has also been seem close to the top of the time sheets on certain tracks, as had the Audi R8, and you get to a point where you found that nearly every car has been named as being a possible dominant car.

Currently the GT organisers are working on a second test day and a report will be done for that too. In the meantime, there are just 2 days until the sign-ups open at 6pm on Sunday, and the cars will go like hotcakes as teams try to get their favoured car, hoping to get a step closer to winning themselves a brand new, state of the art racing cockpit.

As stated on this weeks TORA Radio will try to record a brief broadcast during the signup opening, as will be giving a rundown to the teams and drivers entered, cars which get taken quickly and if this sign-up will break the TORA record!



There's just one last thing, need to choose which car I want, STILL!