Project S had ended and the following season of the World Cup races of the 2006 season were finished, the 2007 season would be the season to carry the mountain pass celebration races and the 2008 was the season that had been predicted to become the toughest and the one with the fiercest competition of them all as there were some new and more powerful competitors showing up in all classes.
Also because several old stars were planning a massive comeback to the real World Cup deal, although some of the contenders had signed on for the 2007 season.
The 2007 season was uncertain but for the GT-U class the majority of the bets were on the heroes from previous year, that was Sweeper and Carlos who had come close in almost all battles they had been having.

The neverending sub bet on who was going to win the next race of the two rivals was probably the most risky bet you could ever do in the World Cup as their performance was so close that the smallest error, failure or change in conditions could change the outcome quickly.
The rest of the contenders in the GT-Unlimited class were still far away from matching the two crazy drivers so no wonder they were the favorite amongst those who placed bets.
However their road into the World Cup had been a hard road to walk, getting into the event was the easy part, getting the machinery dialed in right for the competition was the hard part.
Sweeper had gathered a lot of knowledge running the classes starting out with the GT300 due to the fact that he didn't qualify for GT-Stock as that class was reserved for really slow cars and it was also the class that had the strictest regulations on how the cars were to be designed and look like.

In fact there was no reasons why the GT-S was so strict compared to the other classes but judging from the competition lists you could see that the GT-S class had very few contenders compared to the higher classes like the GT300, GT500 and GT1000 with the GT-U at the top.
Once upon time there was a suggestion within the World Cup to introduce a GT700 or GT800 class but that was dropped quickly as it was not fitting in the system and most vehicles that moved out of the GT500 always boosted up to 900 HP rather quickly.
The checkup of a cars performance was always done pre race in the lower classes below GT-U with restrictors being used in the GT-S.
To keep everything as close to street racing as possible demands for safety equipment were never put in place, however spectator positions were greatly revised after the accident that Kenneth and a Supra was involved in.
Only the GT-S had strict rules for rollcages and other types of security equipment of all the classes.
GT-Unlimited was very much like its name instituted, it was free for all but there was ONE rule that existed and there had been records of people breaking it.

That specific rule stated that sabotage was completely unacceptable and illegal! And the punishment for breaking that rule was being banned from all World Cup events.
Sinjo once participated in the GT500 but was banned when he was caught red handed while attempting sabotage at an opponent's car.
There had been other bans put out through the history of the World Cup, and Kenneth was an example of a ban done by publicity reasons before the spectator positions were revised and repositioned.

The World Cup was not a stable event by any means, it had fallen apart 2 times and speculants were foreseeing a new breakup soon in the future.
The usual reason for it was the financing aspect of the event as the majority of the commercial and sponsor money never made it out to the general public like regular racing did.
It was specifically aimed at those who had interest in street racing and those who knew about it.
Also through time the sponsors had developed ways of keeping the police out of the event or occupied so they could do their street racing in peace without being interrupted.
For the mountain passes, this was not an issue but whenever they were having events at motorways or in industrial areas it was an issue they could not look past.
Race track events were usually done as a track rental for a few days, which was costy when you consider they had famous race tracks in the list like the Nurburgring Nordschliefe.