Bentley and motorsport

Earlier this week Bentley confirmed that a GT3 version of the Continental GT would indeed go racing after numerous demo runs and appearances at motor shows around the world.

It isn’t going to be a one-race wonder though; it will make its debut in the Abu Dubai 12 hour race in December and then contend the 2014 Blancpain series as a factory-backed effort. This is serious business then, but why would Bentley decide to go racing, exactly? 

To the uninitiated a Bentley entering a motorsport event would be about as rare as a crocodile being seen off the west coast of Cornwall, but you would be wrong. In the 1920s cars bearing the ‘Big B’ entered – and indeed won a few times – Le Mans, and again in 2003 with the Speed Eight (granted, it was little more than a rebadged Audi effort, but even so). 

Like every manufactor who has ever spent money on anything, there would have been a meeting at the HQ to decide what series to race in and whether the project would be viable or not. This is an interesting one; Bentley is clearly a premium brand with a luxury bias. While a Continental GT Speed is very quick in a straight-line, it wouldn’t be the first choice if you were looking for a car to destroy Welsh B-roads. And when has anyone seen a Mulsane pounding around a Brands Hatch track day event?

Having a couple of cars contesting the Blancplain series isn’t exactly going to do wonders for brand recognition too, more so in China and India where sales of this type of car are currently skyrocketing, as motorsport is still an alien concept to a large number of Chinese, too, and the Blancplain series isn’t exactly well-known as I alluded to above. 

However – and is it quite a big one at that too – by going racing, it shows that the company is more than just a footballer’s favourite car maker and the company’s directors are willing to take a risk and have fun. Mind you, this isn’t their first foray into motorsport since the Speed Eight: in 2011 race ace Juha Kankkunen drove a ‘nearly standard’ Conti to a new ice world speed record and in the process generated a load of headlines, and probably a couple more sales off the back of it, although I struggle to see a huge market for a car that will do 200mph on ice and seat four in comfort at the same time. 

Never mind that the car was privately owned – this was unsurprisingly buried deep in the press releases at the time – and could have prompted the execs to give a green-light to the programme after seeing the reaction. 

Whatever the reason for building a racing version of the Continental GT3 is, I salute Bentley for doing it, and am thoroughly looking forward to seeing pictures of the car – which weighs half that of the road-going version! – in action. 

The best form of advertising a premium brand is to go racing – after all, that old adage of “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” will never go away, will it? 

Let me know what you think in the comment section below or on Twitter: is racing a good way of making a premium brand more premium?