PWC Hires Blancpain GT Race Director

Photo: Dirk Bogaerts/SRO

Pirelli World Challenge will have an expanded officiating team next year with the addition of Blancpain GT Series race director Alain Adam.

Confirmed during last weekend’s Total 24 Hours of Spa, Adam will head up PWC’s new group of stewards that will be dedicated to the new-look GT series.

A seperate group is expected to be in charge of the GTS and TC divisions on race weekends. 

Adam is the first major new hire since SRO’s acquisition of WC Vision earlier this year.

“He is arguably the best in the business,” WC Vision President and CEO Greg Gill told Sportscar365. “It’s an honor to work with him.

“We’ve seen that one set of race directors and stewards to do three classes of racing was frustrating. It was frustrating for the teams because [they couldn’t get situations resolved immediately]

“We needed to do this for the customers, first and foremost.”

Gill stressed that the addition of Adam, who also serves as race director for Blancpain GT Series Asia, is not a reflection on PWC’s current officiating staff and rather a leveraging of its new resources.

“The SRO’s relationship is on a global level, creating a global BoP, but also a global standard for what people respected within the FIA and the level of stewardship and race direction,” he said.

“We’re excited now because we’ll have the staffing that will allow that to be executed.

“Our staff is a very large investment for us but one that absolutely needed to be made.”

Adam, who first visited the PWC paddock during the Lime Rock Park weekend in May, will also be present at next weekend’s SprintX season finale at Utah Motorsports Campus, in preparation for 2019.

Gill said the goal will be to create a unified officiating structure across all of its series and tracks.

“A comment was made before, ‘If I’m in an IMSA series, I know I’m being watched and I’ll be called for this,” Gill said.

“‘When I’m in your series, it depends on the venue. It may or may not get called depending on the number of cameras or stewards you have that weekend, etc.’

“That’s unacceptable. That’s not a good service to our customers and to our fans. We want to have that consistency across the board.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John