Heavy Rain Alert Forces Major Barcelona Timetable Changes

An extreme weather alert issued by the local government has forced SRO Motorsports Group to issue a revised timetable for Sunday at Barcelona, with no qualifying session for the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup season finale.

The government directive prohibits any outdoor activity from taking place between 8 p.m. CEST on Saturday and 2 p.m. CEST on Sunday due to heavy rain, thunderstorms and strong winds expected in the Catalunya region.

Saturday’s first GTWC Europe contest was rain-affected and had to be briefly red-flagged after 30 minutes.

The subsequent GT3 Revival Series race was also halted halfway through, but this was not restarted, while the planned Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe encounter — which was due to conclude the day’s racing — was axed altogether.

SRO said in a statement that it still plans to run races on Sunday for all four championships in attendance at Barcelona, which also includes McLaren Trophy Europe, with an amended timetable produced whereby track action would begin at 2:30 p.m. CEST (8:30 a.m. EST).

The GTWC Europe season finale was originally scheduled to run at 4 p.m. local time but it has now been pushed back to 6:20 p.m. CEST (12:20 p.m. EST) after contests for the three support series.

With no bespoke qualifying session taking place, the grid will instead be formed by the best laps from each crew’s second driver during Free Practice 2 on Friday afternoon.

However, with FP2 having been held in wet conditions, this will result in a jumbled grid as teams opted for differing approaches to the session.