Dutch Endurance - Donkervoort D8 GT4

It’s the year 2007, and the Stéphane Ratel Orgsnisation, SRO in short, is trying to start a new racing championship. Following the success of the GT3 European Championship created by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, they created the GT4 European Series, a lower class racing more focussed on driving skill rather than the car’s performance. That’s why driver criteria are way tighter in GT4 than they are in GT3. It also promoted weight reduction for cars in order to create less CO2 emissions

Donkervoort had already been looking for a racing series to participate in, and the D8 would be allowed in the GT4 class. So they decided to participate in the series, and they chose the new D8 GT to race. They unveiled it at the Geneva Motor Show in 2006, and it was the first and only hardtop Donkervoort produced. Not only that, it was and still is the lightest GT car in the world, with a dry weight of 650kg. This was due to the custom 17 inch aluminium rims made by RAYS, that weighed 6kg a piece, and the extensive use of carbon fibre. This also meant the car has a high passive safety, and a very stiff chassis.

They would enter the car in the Sports light race series category, where cars such as the KTM X-bow and the Lotus 2-Eleven participate. That was however a problem, since the weight limit of the cars in this category was set to 750kg. The D8 was way lighter than that, and after the addition of a rollcage and other ancillaries, they still had to carry a 60kg in weight ballast to reach the weight limit.

The Donkervoort did have other advantages too. The 1.8 litre DOHC 20V turbocharged Audi four pot had already proven to take 400 horsepower with no problem, so with the 270 horsepower allowed in GT4 this was no problem. The cooling systems were enlarged to cope with endurance racing. They showed the final result at the 24 hours of Spa-Francorchamps

They entered two D8 GT4s into the race, one driven by the French driver Stephane Wintenberger, and the other one driven by Denis Donkervoort. The season was meant to be a training season, but the results weren’t that good. In the first race both of the cars were in last place. The second race was better, with Wintenberger managing to get third in class and twelfth place overall, while Denis had less luck and didn’t finish at all. In the third and last race, only Wintenberger started and managed to get first in class and eighth overall, giving Donkervoort their first victory. Side note here is that only eight cars finished the race, with him being the only one in his class.

This was a bad season, but there was a reason the results weren’t great: the tires. These were designed for cars weighing over 1000 kilograms. With a car weighing three quarters of that, these were way too hard for the car to be raced on. This issue had been solved by switching to grooved tires for the 2009 season. Together with a new helical geared Quaife gearbox, the Donkervoort managed to win the 2009 season

After these two seasons of GT4 racing, Donkervoort decided to take a revamped version of the D8 GT4 to the 24 Hours of Dubai in 2010. The car was entered in the SP3 class, which is reserved for FIA GT4 spec vehicles, with some alterations depending on engine displacement to even out the field. Denis Donkervoort and Stephane Wintenberger were still the drivers of the car, but they were now accompanied by Nico Pronk and Peter Kox.

They managed to get position 34 out of 80 cars in the qualifiers. During the 531 laps it did in the 24 hours it climbed up several positions and ended up fifth in it’s class and 23rd overall. They ran the car in the next race in 2011 as well, starting from a low 40th place, but they managed to get the car climbing up the ranks, eventually reaching 13th place overall and a first place in class at the end of the race, with 551 laps completed. A good result to stop racing, since this was the last season for the car. And to this day Donkervoort hasn’t made a new race car again. But they did show that they can build a good one.