Success Ballast, which has been a feature of the FIA GT3 European Championship since 2009, has been replaced with Compensation Times for the 2011 season. Instead of the top three cars and drivers being awarded +20kg, +15kg and +10kg in each race, they will receive a time of +15 seconds for 1st place, +10 seconds for second place and +5 seconds for 3rd, which will be added to the minimum pit stop duration set for the following race in the Championship.

The move away from success ballast was made after it was felt that success ballast, coupled with ballast weight used to balance the performance of the various cars in the championship, was adversely affecting the performance and competitiveness of some cars. This led to the decision to remove success ballast from the equation, but keeping ballast weights as part of the Balance of Performance tests for each homologated model. The Compensation Time will be added to the pitstop time of the top three cars and drivers at the next race. The top three in the first race of the weekend will have the Compensation Times applied for the second race of the same weekend and not at the next event as was the case with success ballast, the top three of the second race weekend will have the Compensation Times added to the pitstop time of the first race at the next event.

Success ballast was introduced in 2009 to stop one team / driver pairing dominating the championship and, while this has proved to be successful, the application of Compensation Times during the pitstops will be equally effective while not being reliant on adding ballast to a car.

SRO CEO Stephane Ratel said: “This move away from Success Ballast in GT3 should help the teams to be more consistent throughout the season while keeping a check on the top three cars and drivers at each event so we don’t have one dominant team/driver combination. This change will help keep the FIA GT3 European Championship in its position as the leading GT series in Europe.”

Source : SRO