Review: Ginetta GTP8

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literally the one decent photo their crew got of my drive. the one. decent. photo. where’s jamey price when you need him.

Call this one The Art Of Reviewing In The Rain. I was the second person to drive Ginetta’s new GTP8 on track in the United States. (The first was Ginetta boss Mike Simpson.) Our venue: the lovely but anodyne Club Motorsports course in New Hampshire.

At a dealer retail of $220,000, the 6.2-liter, 400-horse, 2500-pound GTP8 represents a substantial purchase for most of us. It’s also a serious vehicle in a way that a street-oriented kinda-super-ish-car like a Porsche GT3RS or Ferrari 296 is most assuredly not. Nor is it likely to have the gold-plated resale value of the above Cars-N’-Coffee trolleys. So you shouldn’t buy one, or even place a deposit, before experiencing one firsthand. Ginetta USA is happy to make that happen for qualified buyers, and in this case “qualified” means “fiscally qualified” and “not a liability on track”.

Should you even bother checking one out? It depends on who you are. So I’ve written a few different two-paragraph reviews aimed at different kinds of buyers. Figure out which one you are, and proceed accordingly.

Who am I, you might ask? For those of you who aren’t frequent ACF readers: I’m a Scorpio. I enjoy long walks on the beach, holding hands, and making enemies between the green and checkered flag. I’m currently racing a very logical trifecta of Radical SR8, Radical PR6, and Plymouth Neon in SCCA, where I am a four-time divisional champion. In the past, I’ve tested a diverse variety of semi-pro race hardware like the GT3 and GT4 McLaren customer cars, GT4 BMW customer car, Sebeco SPX, Radical SR3 RX, Lola SP/300.R, and a few other things that I’ll remember immediately after I publish this article. I drove Hondas and Mazda in Grand-Am, CTCC, and World Challenge, too.

So, without further ado:

the author, looking sullen

If you’ve never driven a real race car, or have never driven a real race car above a Spec Miata…

Broadly speaking, the GTP8 is a tuned-down version of the $260,000 GT4 EVO. It’s become common lately for baby-blanket racing novices to jump out of a Spec Miata and right into the GT4-class cars. In fact, there’s a whole race league for people who have no business in a GT4 car, and they call it the “World” Racing League.

Ginetta knows these people exist, and they’d like to do some business with them, both in WRL and in a special GTP8 spec racing series to debut in 2026. So the GTP8, like the GT4 Evo, has plenty of features to calm and protect the inexperienced racer. To begin with, the fundamental balance and engineering of the Ginetta race cars is excellent. Unlike McLaren’s GT4, this isn’t a converted supercar with the turbo wick turned down to “sleepytime”; unlike the Mustang GT4, this isn’t a schoolbus with every upgrade IMSA will permit. It’s a proper GT racer with the engine in the safest place, meaning “between the front axle and you.” It is stable and predictable by default. I was hitting about 150mph on the front straight at Club Motorsports, in heavy rain, within my first twelve minutes on track. That is the kind of confidence the GTP8 inspires.

The cockpit easily accommodates up to about a 6’4”, 300-pound driver. All controls are labeled in easy-to-understand fashion. Most of the stuff you’d need to do during the race is right there on the steering wheel. Of particular interest to vaguely trained monkeys driving the car for the first time in the rain, such as your humble author: The traction control is adjustable on the fly, but the throttle response is also adjustable on the fly. Put these two together, and it’s possible to handle a broad variety of weather and driver skill. Oh, and you get air conditioning, because WRL typa drivers are fragile people and why not be comfortable?

The GM-sourced 6.2-liter V-8 is charming in a Corvette sort of way. It doesn’t really want to rev, but it makes a lovely noise and in this lightweight coupe the forward push is somewhere between a Ferrari 458 and a Ferrari 488. Closer to the former. You’ll use a clutch pedal to get started, but once you’re above 35mph or so the shift paddles are all you need to get through the Xtrac 6-speed sequential box.

(Note, please: this is not a supercar DCT. It’s a dog-box with a manual clutch. You can stall it, you can ask for and receive shifts that will jolt your spine. The GTP8 is meant to be driver-friendly, but it’s not a Vegas rental Huracan.)

The rubber is generously sized — current spec is a 305-width Pirelli front and rear — so cornering limits will be well above what you’d expect from a street car. I don’t have published figures on downforce, but in normal use I wouldn’t expect much in the way of aero behavior from the GTP8. Which is how Ginetta, and the customers, want it. If you think you can drive a wing, put your big boy pants on and buy a Formula Atlantic.

It’s a lovely vehicle, filled to the brim with details that feel special, plenty of exposed carbon fiber, some beautiful welds, and a really quite lovely shape that manages to feel modern and vintage at the same time. That being said, if you don’t yet have any big-bore racing experience, this would be best enjoyed as a trackday car. The firm would be delighted to sell you a GTP8 and get you coached up to competitive pace over the course of a year or two; I spoke to owners who are doing just that. But it’s not the ideal choice for a Miata loyalist.

If you’ve been driving Radicals, Stohrs, Formula Continentals, or Formula Enterprise…

…this is a step backwards. The aero is mostly cosmetic, the straight-line pace isn’t much better than an FE2, and you won’t like the amount of braking it needs before every turn.

That being said, it’s pretty damned hard to find a big open-wheel field and the Platinum Radicals like the SR8 and SR10 can be expensive to run. So if being in the thick of competition is more important to you than pulling 2.5g in a long corner, talk to Ginetta.

This is a trivially easy car for an experienced wheel to operate. It has literally zero bad habits, even in the rain. You can hold slip angles if you like, or you can turn the TC down to the point where such a thing is unlikely to happen. Default behavior is nose-grind, adjustable pretty easily on the throttle. I wasn’t thrilled with how the ABS operates in heavy rain, but compared to the ABS on my Radicals, which is provided entirely by the toes of my left foot, it’s pretty decent.

Visibility is really good, too. It’s just a nice car to drive, and I imagine you can place it in traffic within an inch or so, even at max speed.

Drivers who are aging out of being competitive in an SCCA P1 or P2 car might find this to be a really nice place of refuge. The seat is hilariously comfortable. You could have two knee replacements and still be able to enter and exit without much trouble.

On the front straight at Club Motorsports, it sounds like an LMP3 car. Or maybe a C6.R. I like it.

If you’re a NASA GTS4/5, SCCA American Sedanner, Spec Corvette racer, or similar…

…then step right up, my friend, because this is the racer you’ve always really wanted. It’s not some finicky street car that tears its subframes out while you tear your hair out. It’s not a hasty conversion of something that lived ten years in a parking lot before being drafted into a nightmare second life of being repaired on the weekends with whatever Chinesium the AutoZone down the street from Summit Point or Willow Springs has to offer. It’s not an adventure in setup — the thing comes with a book, just like a Radical. Everything you’ll touch or adjust has been specified with competition use, and competition maintenance, in mind.

Yeah, it costs four times as much as a Spec Iron Mustang. Which makes it a bargain.

Putting just 400hp into a GT4 car with 305 tires makes everything nice and predictable, even in bad weather. Compared to a Mustang or even a C5 spec car, the visibility and sense of corners is delightful. The ergonomics are correct — I say this as a tall-torso person who has had to remove his helmet just to get into a McLaren GT3 car and even some American Iron SN95 entrants. Operation couldn’t be simpler. It’s all right there on the panel, which has lights to let you know what you’ve selected!

I should note that I briefly drove the G56 GTA, which is a $135,000 version of the Ginetta powered by a 305hp Duratec 3.7, and I didn’t like it at all. 310 horsepower, mostly delivered at the top of the rev range and with some reluctance, doesn’t charm at all. The 6.2 V8 kinda makes the Ginetta work the way it’s supposed to. It also sounds the way it’s supposed to. If you’ve ever run a Camaro in AI or AS, you’ll recognize the sound right away. It’s the sound of freedom, and also the sound of an engine that should have its maintenance and condition kept up to absolute spec. Not to say that the LS engines aren’t reliable in competition use, and Ginetta expects a long life from the variant they provide, but still… This is not an MZR 2.0 and you can’t treat it like one.

If you can afford the price hike over a street-based racing ponycar, I strongly recommend you consider the GTP8. If you’re thinking of moving from NASA or SCCA to SRO/IMSA/whatever, this is also a fine platform with which to do it. I would recommend it without hesitation over a Mustang GT4 or — God help you — a Mustang Challenge car. Ginetta will be supporting these vehicles with love and care long after “Ford Racing” has paid Verizon to block every phone number in your extended family. It’s worth your attention.

If you literally don’t have $500 in your bank account and you will never have the chance to own a GTP8…

Hey, good news! You can race Ginettas in a dedicated E-Series. Is it better than the Radical SR8 iRacing series? I have no idea. I race a real car, on a real track, with a real credit card that is real overdrawn.

This concludes today’s Ginetta GTP8 test. It’s a great car, and I really liked it. While I would personally much rather stay in open-cockpit prototypes and formula cars, I also recognize that there are significant safety and competitive advantages to driving something like the GTP8, which has a robust safety cage and a nice windshield between you and flying tires. Is it worth $220,000? Well, for about the same money you could get a Richard Mille “Felipe Massa” watch in rose gold. That would make you look like a world-class racer, for sure.

The GTP8 will make you feel like a world-class racer. And if you stick with it long enough, you might even become a world-class racer. Isn’t that better?