GT World Challenge Europe calendar reshuffled again

The 2020 season of the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS suffered another major adjust in its calendar, and along with venue changes, formats and class structures had their alterations in order to have some sort of a season with limited time as SRO will have a little less than a semester to work with.

The contingency plan that SRO had in place for GT World Challenge Europe initially had only Imola included as an extra, but now Magny-Cours joins the list, and despite this, the series will still work with a reduced number of venues, so format changes were needed to include all ten races as original in both sprint and endurance races, or at least keep the same mileage of a normal season.

While Imola was brought in as a season ending sprint round, it was changed into a three hour endurance race that will open the schedule in late July, still opening the series in Italian territory after the traditional Monza round being announced as canceled. In order to compensate for the loss of the UK rounds, one sprint weekend and one endurance weekend were open, so a format change will see the sprint races be added to Misano and Barcelona as they become triple headers, a format that was used in WTCR last season. The remaining sprint weekends at Magny-Cours and the renewed Zandvoort will retain the common double-header format.

About the vacant endurance weekend, its length was included in the Nürburgring round, which turned it into a six hour race, which hasn’t happened since 2014 with the iRacing 1000, and after it the event swapped length with Paul Ricard and turned into a 500 kilometer or 3 hours when featured in the calendar, while the Paul Ricard 1000 became a traditional event and preparation for the 24 Hours of Spa due to its calendar spot.

Given the fact that most of the support races will remain committed and will consume most of the non-GTWC track time, the GT Sports Club was merged to the GT World Challenge grid, though still having its own race at the sprint rounds, which would make the sprint side multi-spec for the first time as GT2 machinery is set to join the GT3 cars, and entrants can go alone or with a two driver lineup per car.

Along with the adjusts in the sporting side, health and safety measures will come in to weekends that will have no spectators and strictly essential staff, be it from teams, race control and media, which will work in designated cells in order to avoid direct contact, while also following the remaining procedures like wearing masks and keep social distancing, like it is being done in all sports events that are returning to action at the moment, like the Bundesliga in football and the NASCAR in the motorsport ambient.

The SRO weekends will be subject to the national health and safety regulations regarding the COVID-19 prevention, and further calendar changes aren’t discarded if the need appears.

 

2020 GT World Challenge Europe - updated calendar

Imola - July 26^th (3H Endurance)

Misano - August 7^th-9^th (Sprint triple header)

Nürburgring - September 6^th (6H Endurance)

Magny-Cours - September 12^th-13^th (Sprint double header)

Zandvoort - September 26^th-27^th (Sprint double header)

Barcelona - October 9^th-11^th (Sprint triple header)

24 Hours of Spa - October 24^th-25^th

Paul Ricard 1000 - November 15^th

PHOTO - SRO