2022 Calendar now available
Find out which events will be part of the Group 1 Portugal 2022 season
The History of Group 1 Portugal
Created in 2012, this series for Classics with Pre-1981 Group 1 specifications was born out of the need for teams to compete in a championship where participation costs were kept to a minimum, in keeping with the English "Club Racing" spirit. This competition is always disputed by class, rewarding the great effort of the teams and drivers that race in each class and thus dispute their championship within the championships.
As with the season, these races have proved to be extremely interesting. Just remember the 1979, 1980 and 1981 Gr.1 national championships, not to mention the famous BTCC in England, which was also disputed with this type of car at the time.
Nowadays, both in Portugal and in countries such as England and France, Group 1 races have provided very well contested races, ultra competitive and with grids that are always growing. Besides this, the value of these Group 1 cars has been increasing, because there are more and more people interested in participating in these competitions, which makes these cars safe investments.
Concept
The Championship tries to recreate the Group 1 races that were extremely successful in the 70s and early 80s. Today, just as then, the difficulty of finding homologated and original parts for some models was great and as such the technical regulations were designed in order to overcome this difficulty.
This competition was designed to have controlled costs, where the cars that participate have a price between 4.000 euros and 40.000 euros (with rare exceptions) and the annual participation costs are around 10.000 euros per team - 5.000 euros per driver when the driving is divided by two participants.
Group 1 Portugal is made up of five events between Portugal and Spain. The types of competition can vary between Sprint (2 x 20 minutes), Semi Endurance (2 x 40 minutes) and the 250km Estoril is the only endurance race with a 120 minute race.
Group 1 Portugal is divided into categories, which differ by the year of homologation and the cylinder capacity of the cars. See the table below for the different categories which make up Group 1 Portugal:
