In GT and endurance racing, professionals and paying amateurs often share the same car. To keep that fair, the FIA rates every driver — not the car — into one of four tiers, the driver categorisation. Series then use those ratings to control how teams build their crews and to run several fair contests on one grid.
The four ratings
The tiers are named after precious metals, highest to lowest:
- Platinum — elite professionals: current or former FIA Super Licence holders, and drivers with top results in the highest single-seater and sports-car championships.
- Gold — established professionals with strong records, but without the very top-tier credentials of a Platinum.
- Silver — generally younger drivers building a career (the rating leans on getting your first licence before 30).
- Bronze — amateurs and gentleman drivers, typically those who started racing later in life (first licence after 30) or without a significant professional record.
A rating reflects pedigree, not raw pace — a quick Silver can beat a Gold, and an experienced Bronze can be genuinely fast. Categorisations are reviewed and re-published once a year (the definitive list late in the year), and can move up or down as a driver's career changes.
How series use them
The ratings exist so organisers can mandate balanced line-ups and carve one grid into sub-classes:
- GT World Challenge (SRO) sorts crews into the Pro, Gold, Silver and Bronze cups by the combined ratings of their drivers — so a full grid of GT3 cars is really several races at once. Note that "Pro" here is a class, not a fifth rating; a Gold- or Silver-cup car that finishes ahead still wins overall.
- The WEC applies it by class: Hypercar is closed to Bronze drivers (it's the elite class), while every LMGT3 crew must include at least one Bronze driver — giving amateurs a seat in a world championship alongside a pro.
That is what a series means when it splits its field "by driver rating". For how a whole endurance grid is organised into classes, see the classes at Le Mans.