BMW is on the brink of securing the inaugural GT4 Manufacturer Ranking crown after pulling significantly clear of Porsche ahead of the season's concluding event at Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia.
The Bavarian marque entered the Monochrome GT4 Australia finale at Mount Panorama (9/10 November) with an advantage of 631 points and stretched it by nearly 200 to 824, all but clinching the global title in the process.
The Central West Prestige BMW captured Silver class victory in the opening contest, while Randall Racing scored Am honours in the second outing to help BMW earn a weekend score of 661 points. There were no wins for Porsche's contingent, though Method Motorsport and TekworkX Motorsport each secured a brace of podiums in Pro-Am and Am respectively.
The Stuttgart marque was out-scored by both Mercedes-AMG and McLaren, the former taking a Pro-Am win with Buckby Motorsport and the latter earning an Am class triumph with Property Investment Store. Ford also banked a pair of wins at Bathurst thanks to Gomerall Motorsport (Pro-Am) and Miedecke Motor Group (Silver).
This weekend’s season finale will see a 35-car field tackle the GT4 European Series Powered by RAFA Racing Club decider in Jeddah. At present, a BMW win is effectively certain due to each brand’s number of entries in each class. It is possible that last-minute changes could present Porsche with an opportunity to overhaul its rival, but this would still require an unprecedented points swing.
The opening 60-minute race runs on Friday at 22:05 local time (19:05 GMT) followed by the closing contest at 14:15 (11:15 GMT) on Saturday. It will bring the curtain down on the inaugural GT4 Manufacturer Ranking campaign, which has been disputed by eight manufacturers across eight series and 50 events organised or licensed by SRO Motorsports Group.
HOW ARE GLOBAL POINTS SCORED?
SRO Motorsports Group must account for varying degrees of manufacturer participation across each continent when calculating the GT4 Manufacturer Ranking.
As such, points are awarded based on the position of each manufacturer’s leading car per category (Overall, Pro-Am, Am etc) in every race.
Points for Sprint races of up to 60 minutes are based on the standard allocation (25 – 18 – 15 – 12 – 10 – 8 – 6 – 4 – 2 – 1). This allocation doubles for races lasting two and three hours.
The points scored per brand are then multiplied by the number of cars competing in that category. Therefore, a win in a category with five cars competing is worth less than one where 20 cars are entered.
No cars are removed from the classification – if the top six cars are from a single brand, the next brand will score points for seventh. These points are added across the categories and races to give the manufacturers’ global score.