About the GT & Sports Car Cup

Meet the GTSCC Promoters: Flavien & Vanessa Marçais

Flavien and Vanessa Marçais are both steeped in motorsport. Brought up around fine motor cars in families rooted in racing on either side of the English Channel, the duo bring huge experience and passion to the challenging and often difficult roles of organising and running events.

French-born Flavien was a very promising competitor who started club racing at 18, progressed through national Formula Renault and Caterham championships then switched to his beloved Historics. Having mastered Grand Prix, sports and GT cars, he starred in a Formula 1 BRM at Monaco. Having worked with the finest cars and written about the sport for many years, Flavien is renowned as a historian and journalist.

Wife Vanessa is British, daughter of leading Jaguar restorer and specialist Aubrey Finburgh. She, too, has raced Historic sportscars. Having carved her career in the historic motoring world from a young age, working with some of the best in the industry, Vanessa founded Automobiles Historiques Limited – parent company of the GT & Sports Car Cup – with husband Flavien some 20 years ago.

As well as dealing in the finest historic cars and automobilia with the utmost professionalism and discretion, Flavien and Vanessa added Ferret Photographic, the motorsport image library built up over decades by Ted Walker, which comprises over 7-million original images to their group in 2017. Augmenting the Marçais family’s extraordinary collection, amassed by Flavien’s late grandfather Serge Pozzoli, it forms one of the world’s finest archives.

The GT & Sports Car Cup

The first half of the 1960s (spanning FIA Periods E and F in today’s Historic sport) was without doubt the golden age of Grand Touring car racing. It was also the most photogenic, as motivated manufacturers who not only produced great cars to sell but also recognised the benefits of competition in their marketing strategies, reaped the rewards of success.

The FIA GT Cup started the genre rolling in 1961, and it escalated over the next few seasons. Running within the bilateral World Sportscar Championship, the FIA International Trophy for GT Manufacturers enjoyed equal status (and often ran concurrently with) a GT Prototype contest which reflected the flat-out direction in which the sport was headed. This was thus the absolute pinnacle of racing for production-based machinery.

Le Mans was the championship’s focal point, but the 2000kms of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, Sicily’s Targa Florio and enduros at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps, Germany’s Nurburgring, France’s Reims, Italy’s Mugello, Great Britain’s iconic Tourist Trophy and Bridgehampton, New York – with mountain climbs such as Ollon-Villars in Switzerland providing a change of scenery and discipline – provided adventure for works teams and privateers.

Drivers of the calibre of Jo Bonnier, Jim Clark, Olivier Gendebien, Dan Gurney, Hans Herrmann, Graham Hill, Phil Hill, Bruce McLaren, Stirling Moss, Mike Parkes, Pedro Rodriguez and John Surtees were among the leading lights among a cast of hundreds, many of whom were pecunious amateur weekend warriors indulging their passion for driving.

Given its status, inter-marque rivalry ran at an all-time high. Ferrari, through its distributors’ teams (fielding howling V12-engined 250 GT Berlinettas, then GTOs), took on straight-six Aston Martin DB4s, their factory ‘Project’ evolutions and lightweight Jaguar E-types, plus thudding Ford V8-powered Shelby Mustang GT350s and AC/Shelby Cobras before the Daytona Cobra Coupes swept the board in 1965.

Bizzarrini/ISO Grifo, Chevrolet (Corvette), Austin-Healey and Sunbeam (Tiger) were protagonists in the over three-litre division too. Alfa Romeo (Giulia TZs), Porsche, MG, Morgan and Triumph were key players in the two-litre split, while a host of models from companies such as Abarth-Simca, Alpine [-Renault] and Lotus (Elite) populated the 1300cc class.

Since 2007, the GT & Sports Car Cup has celebrated this wonderful epoch with a short series of top quality races – not a championship – at classic venues in Great Britain and continental Europe. Fifties’ sports-prototypes of the [FIA Period E, Pre-’61 for these cars] era, which reignites Lotus and Lola rivalry within the showcase.

Entry to this aspirational GTSCC series has always been by invitation only, with highest standards of driving, car preparation and camaraderie demanded. Period specifications and regulations are respected and strictly policed. Events are family-friendly and competitors have come to expect premium hospitality when they and their teams relax away from the track.