One of the things we always wait eagerly during the 24 Hours of Spa weekend is the already traditional SRO press conference where the future plans are announced, including calendars for the next season, and the Intercontinental GT Challenge will see one of the most drastic changes since its inception to accommodate top tier races in its schedule.
None of the signature races will be touched, so Bathurst and Spa have their obvious spots, and the Indianapolis 8 Hour has the American market presence as a factor, with it being a reasonable success, but joining them will be a rather unexpected entry, as the 24 Hours of Nürburgring will be the second full day race for 2024, as an agreement was reached with ADAC to incorporate the race into IGTC.
The inclusion of Nürburgring is actually a surprise, especially after the sim racing community made it sort of a meme due to extensive requests for the full complex to be included in Assetto Corsa Competizione, although KUNOS Simulazioni still haven't disclosed any plans past the upcoming GT2 cars promised in the 2022 SRO press conference.
Going for one of the biggest 24 hour races of the World to share a calendar with another eventually meant that concessions needed to be made, and in this case it meant the exit of the recently added Gulf 12 Hours and of the Kyalami 9 Hours. While reasons for the gulf race to be sacked remain unknown, the South African race offered a clear picture over the years, where difficult logistics and clashes with the South African Endurance Series made it not popular with either the local or the overseas squads as car counts suffered more and more to get into double digits.
Historically, SRO tends to cut off the IGTC races that don't draw attractive numbers of competitors, like with the California 8 Hours and the Sepang 12 Hours, while the Suzuka 10 Hours had the bad luck of multiple cancellations due to the COVID-induced travel restrictions to Japan.
2024 will be another year when not all regions that feature a GT World Challenge series will have an IGTC round, with failure to include the Asian round as a point scoring event of the regional GTWC schedule being a constant thing, although Stéphane Ratel announced that SRO might add a fifth IGTC round if consultation with the manufacturers gets positive results, which can change things for the Asian continent.
While the eligible classes for the other three IGTC races are more than known, no details were revealed about the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, so it remains a question if the classes derived from the NLS will still be present in the N24 with SRO promotion.
2024 Intercontinental GT Challenge calendar:
18 February - Bathurst 12 Hour
1-2 June - 24 Hours of Nürburgring
29-30 June - 24 Hours of Spa
6 October - Indianapolis 8 Hour
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