2016 is coming to an end, so it is time to take a look back at what turned out to be a unique season of the most exciting GT championship on the motorsports planet.
0: number of times the polesitter managed to win a Qualifying Race of the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup event and number of times a polesitter won a round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup.
0.015: the smallest margin to take pole position this year. It came at the very first race of the season in Misano, when Laurens Vanthoor in the #1 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT R8 beat Alvaro Parente in the #58 Garage 59 McLaren.
0.304 sec: the smallest gap at the end of a race, after the Qualifying Race of the Nürburgring Sprint Event, won by Enzo Ide and Christopher Mies, from Rob Bell and Alvaro Parente.
1: number of pole positions Dominik Baumann and Maxi Buhk needed on their way to the overall Blancpain GT Series drivers’ title. Maxi Buhk took it in Monza.
1: number of Main Race laps Enzo Ide led on the way towards his Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup drivers’ title. That was during the final event in Barcelona. His car also led 13 laps of the Main Race at Brands Hatch, but then it was Christopher Mies at the wheel.
1.257 sec: the average gap between the winner and the second place car in the four ‘normal’ races of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup. With the Total 24 Hours of Spa included, the average is 24.087 sec.
2 drivers managed to claim more than one pole position, both at the wheel of an Audi R8 LMS: Laurens Vanthoor (Belgian Audi Club Team WRT) in Misano and Spa, and Franck Perera (ISR) in Brands Hatch and Barcelona.
4 Am Cup podium finishes in four Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup races, for Maurice Ricci, Jean-Luc Beaubelique and Gilles Vannelet. But because they missed the Total 24 Hours of Spa they came four points short to claim the title.
5: number of times the margin for pole position was less than one tenth of a second. That’s half the races of the Blancpain GT Series.
5 different brands have taken at least one overall win in the 2016 Blancpain GT Series: Audi (2 wins), BMW (1), Lamborghini (1), Mercedes-AMG (3) and McLaren (3).
10: number of times 2016 Blancpain GT Series Pro-Am champion Michal Broniszewski scored class points in a main race. That’s ten out of ten, in case you were wondering. Half of them were class wins.
11 prestigious car brands were represented during the 2016 Blancpain GT Series.
31: number of cars that where within the same second at the end of the Monza qualifying session.
32,21°C was the highest air temperature for a Blancpain GT Series main race, at the Hungaroring. Track temperature was 42,23°C.
65 cars were on the largest grid of the year, at the Total 24 Hours of Spa.
1323 laps were raced in the 2016 Blancpain GT Series, 363 in the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup, 960 in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup.
That makes for 7656,752 km of racing in 2016, 1499,557 km in the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup and 6157,195 in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup (3719,124 of those in the Total 24 Hours of Spa).