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GT Racer - Racing Like Steve McQueen
Documentary Series

What makes you feel alive?
Try chasing an AC Cobra through the corners of the world-famous circuit of Spa, Belgium - at night, in the rain - at the wheel of an Aston Martin DB4GT. Despite it being 9:52pm you couldn’t be more awake. Your car drifts sideways through that wet corner too close to the edge that’s hard to make out in the dark. You’re doing 100 miles per hour as the cold evening air is blasting through the back quarter window that is missing since the crash. You smell the burning oil, the hot breaks. The carbon monoxide from the not-so-perfectly improvised exhaust pipe is stinging your eyes. As you shift up, you feel the metallic clunk of the gearbox rocking an undamped jolt as if a giant sledgehammer beats you forward. Seconds later you’re doing a 157 miles - in a sixties GT! Vibration and noise are insane! But before you can deepen that thought: Blinding headlights in you review mirror: That Ford GT40 is gaining on you fast.

This is classic car racing! A worldwide fast growing phenomena where colorful characters living out their most sophisticated car-crazed dreams.

GT Racer is taking you literally inside the cars and onto the tracks. As a member of three idiosyncratic race teams, you are getting a peek at the most spectacular series of international classic racing, where the most beautiful vintage racers ever built battle it out on their most glamorous original tracks: 1950s and 60s Aston Martins, Ferraris, Maseratis, Porsches, Mustangs and Cobras at Spa (Belgium), Le Mans (France), the Nuerburgring (Germany), Limerock and Laguna Seca (USA) the Carrera Panamerican (Mexico) and many more.

GT Racer shares the unique experience of the CLASSIC-RACER that time-travels to the Golden Era of car racing. Where it’s not just about the checkered flag but the thrill of the chase. It’s not just about the speed and the noise but the incredible atmosphere. It’s about style and the single most sophisticated way to get you high on G-force.

It’s the unparalleled old school coolness of a time long gone, genuinely revived down to the smallest bolt. If there ever was a way to become Steve McQueen, this is it.

”Racing is Life! Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.” - Steve McQeen in “Le Mans” 1971

Those lines perfectly express the passion for racing, uttered when racing was still tangible and privateers with nothing more than a decent car and talent could challenge big corporations with deep pockets.

And that’s the story we tell: A story of men who can do things only the right way; uncompromised, driven by passion just as in those golden days, when regular sports cars where modified for endurance racing – a time when the pure drive of one gifted man could take on the one of another.

Today, quite frankly, it is all about the budgets allocated to the racing stables, while the privateer, no matter how talented (or wealthy) is out of the game! The big car manufacturers are deciding who’ll win by throwing nine-figure budgets at the game.

But like always, there is an exception and “GT Racer” will follow the people who represent it. People who do not accept the reality forced upon them but instead insist on creating their own.

As the collection and restoration of classic cars enjoys a widespread and fast growing following, so does the racing. But racing classic cars cannot be accomplished “just” with money. It needs dedication, preparation, talent and above all - great passion, resulting in an atmosphere that is truly unique. The players can’t be typecast. They are from very divers backgrounds - only united by the deep love for racing the world’s most beautiful cars.

In “GT Racer” we will follow a handful of passionate racers, their teams and their mind-boggling cars.

The crews are shooting interviews with drivers and mechanics, exploring the mental drama of such a race i.e.: A team feverishly dissembling one car between races to lend a needed part to another team that needs to race right now, only to later change the part back to get the dissembled car ready again.
Small HDTV cameras are used on-board to record during the entire race.

“GT Racer” takes you inside an experience, truly genuine on all levels. Not only the racers, but also the mechanics, spectators, everybody involved, share the same vibrant feeling. To be alive is what sets them apart.

A ’60s Aston racecar is not so easy to come by let alone race it. Compelling character is needed and “GT Racer” will share the pilots’ experience, live with them, film their joy and their despair. These men have cracked the mold, but they are united; all needing this archetypal experience in their lives.

“GT Racer” finds out what makes them tick, what does classic racing mean to them?

We share this modern magic that proves that the people who do it are no less intense and interesting than the hero drivers from the past (or the movie stars playing them). They find the means to create another level of reality. Some financially, some creatively, some by the pure force of their passion and some through a combination of all of the above.

Legends become alive, movies become reality and reality becomes larger than life, as the unscripted TV-show has come full circle!


Because:
Classic car racing has never before been covered like this: It’s a unique slice of our human culture, reflecting what we all long for.

Unscripted TV as cinéma vérité: Reinventing a genre, thus creating a new archetype in its own right with compelling international characters, cars and location.


“Racing is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.”