Autosport Plus

The Dutch oddity that was too niche for its own good

Despite (briefly) having its own F1 arm, Spyker's period in international sportscar racing was spent mostly propping up the grid. Its C8 Laviolette GT2-R stands as one of the last underfunded factory GT efforts that never got a helping hand from BOP

James Newbold May 21, 2020, 3:15 PM

They're the three letters that have come to dominate sportscar racing in the past decade. But in the time before BOP (or Balance of Performance), the mechanism used by governing bodies the world over to incentivise participation by as many manufacturers as possible, there were no leg-ups for smaller manufacturers looking to take on the might of Porsche and Ferrari.

That's not to say that the minnows didn't have their day on occasion. Blackpool manufacturer TVR experienced fleeting success in the Le Mans Series in 2005, while Panoz caused a major upset by winning the GT2 class at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2006.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.