IMSA Date Clashes Affect Porsche, BMW “Quite Heavily”

Photo: Porsche

Porsche and BMW have been left “a bit surprised” by the date clashes produced with the release of the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship schedule, which is set to affect driver lineups “quite heavily” for the German brands in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and 24-hour enduros at the Nürburgring and Spa that now fall on IMSA weekends.

Next year’s WeatherTech Championship calendar will have five conflicts with significant international endurance races, including three WEC rounds as well as the Nürburgring 24 and CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, events that both Porsche and BMW are heavily invested in through factory driver representation.

While this year’s calendars saw two date clashes between IMSA and WEC, a third has been added between the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo and the WeatherTech Championship round at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July, although that race will be for LMP2, GTD Pro and GTD cars only.

“I’m a bit surprised that we have that many clashes,” Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach told Sportscar365. “I thought maybe both series could align not to have that many clashes.

“From an operational point of view, I don’t think it’s a problem [for GTP/Hypercar]. Of course there is a heavy exchange [between the WEC and IMSA teams] but from the operational side, but it shouldn’t be a problem at all.

“Looking at the clashes with Nürburgring and Spa, I think this hurts BMW and us quite heavily just due to the fact that normally we are happy to let our factory drivers racing [in IMSA] drive our GT cars, which helps customers.

“This is going to be really tricky. This hurts a lot more than between the clashes with IMSA and WEC.”

BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos admitted that it’s a challenging situation especially considering the Bavarian manufacturer is entering top-flight WEC competition next year with a two-car Hypercar class effort alongside its existing WeatherTech Championship GTP program and various GT3 activities.

“I started already to put some calendars next to each other, but in the end it will be very challenging,” Roos told Sportscar365.

“For me, it’s a bit difficult because it looks like that the drivers who do the IMSA GTP, they will only do IMSA GTP and that’s it at the moment.

“We have to see if we find another way around [it] but this is how it looks at the first look, which is not our philosophy in the past because our drivers were doing basically more or less everything.

“I also understand that it’s difficult with the WEC championship, the IMSA championship, GT World Challenge, IGTC and DTM, which are the important ones for us, at the end a year has a certain amount of weekends and then at one stage you run out of weekends.

“But I was still hoping to not have clashes with the major events.”

Roos, like a number of other industry experts, were expecting only one WeatherTech Championship clash with the WEC, as indicated by series bosses John Doonan and Frederic Lequien at Le Mans during the release of the world championship’s 2024 calendar.

“I was aware of a clash, it was Long Beach, that this will clash with Imola,” Roos said. “I was aware and said, ‘OK if it’s this one clash, I can understand and somehow maybe find a workaround.’

“But now to have two clashes between IMSA and WEC in the top class, plus the Nürburgring plus Spa is challenging.

“To be honest, it’s challenging because when you just look at our drivers, the four who are doing full IMSA championship here, they were all in one car at the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring.

“So at the end now one car at the Nürburgring, let’s say would be missing because I don’t have the drivers.”

Laudenbach added: “The clashes with Nürburgring and Spa hurts a lot more.

“The clashes with the big GT races gives us additional homework to do. But I don’t want to blame anybody.

“Honestly I don’t think anybody does this on purpose. I think everybody tries to align their calendars with availability of race tracks and all the things you have to look at.

“I think everybody tries to do the best job they can.”

Doonan: No Plans to Change WeatherTech Championship Calendar

While acknowledging the number of overlapping weekends despite the sanctioning body’s best efforts to alleviate clashes, IMSA President Doonan indicated they’re not currently in a position to make any changes to its recently announced calendar.

“As always we do our ever-best to miss clashes because we have a lot of teams, manufacturers and drivers compete everywhere,” Doonan said.

“The additional conflict that we see with WEC is solely television-related and the ability to have a live network television race at Laguna.

“It’s unfortunate but we’re in constant communication with Pierre [Fillon, ACO President], Frederic [Lequien, WEC CEO] and Richard [Mille, FIA Endurance Commission President].

“We all understand there’s going to be times where we just can’t avoid it.”

Doonan added: “Relative to the clash with the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen with the 24 Hours of Spa, it was a similar situation.

“We’re in constant contact with our friends at the SRO. Given the cadence of the ’23 calendar versus what we see in ’24, where Le Mans falls, we just couldn’t avoid it. We’ll continue to do our best to avoid them in the future.

“It’s very difficult. But everybody want to do for the good of the sport.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John