Kirkaldy: WEC/GTWC Europe Clash “A Big Challenge”

Garage 59 team boss Andrew Kirkaldy has described next month’s clash between the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Barcelona round and the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup Portimao series finale as a “big challenge” for teams and drivers competing in both.

A total of 18 drivers have full-season campaigns in both series, with the Garage 59 WEC McLaren 720S GT3 Evo squad particularly affected as four of its six drivers — Marvin Kirchhoefer, Benji Goethe, Tom Fleming and Antares Au — also having GTWC Europe Endurance Cup programs.

Originally there were not due to be any clashes between the two championships but, when the WEC schedule was shuffled amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the Oct. 17-18 weekend became a pinch point.

Although GTWC Europe organizer SRO Motorsports Group has moved its three-hour Portimao Endurance Cup contest to the Saturday, instead of Sunday to avoid the six-hour WEC race, it still poses a headache for teams and drivers.

The provisional Barcelona WEC timetable has LMGT3 qualifying beginning at 11:50 a.m. CEST on Saturday and all FIA Bronze-rated drivers must take part in this session, while the Hyperpole segment for Silver racers is due to start at 12:10 p.m. CEST.

The Portimao race is then due to get under way at 6 p.m. CEST.

While that should leave a time window of over five hours between the two, with Portimao being an hour behind Barcelona because it is in the WEST time zone, it still could be tight for drivers to make the journey, particularly if there are any delays to the Barcelona schedule as there are no commercial flights into Portimao Airport.

The situation is less critical for the five Hypercar drivers involved in GTWC Europe, and Gold/Platinum-graded LMGT3 racers, as they are not required to qualify in Barcelona.

There could, however, also be direct clashes between Friday practice sessions between the two series with the Barcelona Friday schedule not yet revealed.

While Kirkaldy stressed that the “teams will work it out one way or another” he did believe that some drivers may opt against competing in both championships.

“There has been a move of races and the timings to try and make it possible but it’s still quite a challenge,” he told Sportscar365, crediting Stephane Ratel for being “very helpful” in moving the Portimao contest. “All you need is for a plane to have a problem or a delay.

“It adds a big cost, but we are where we are and I fully appreciate it’s not really anyone’s fault, it’s one of those things.”

Kirkaldy added that the clash poses a bigger logistical challenge in terms of getting drivers in the right place than Garage 59 finding resources to operate cars at both tracks.

“It’s not too bad for us,” he explained. “We’ve got a reasonably large team that does other stuff, more (historic) Formula 1 stuff that we run so we have a reasonable amount of resource on that side that we can draft in and some will be ex-our race team.

“From the people point of view it isn’t too bad. It’s not ideal because they wouldn’t be doing it every week like they would be, but it is achievable.

“GT World Challenge and WEC are quite separate anyway in staffing but engineers are a problem — but we’ve got some, we’ll be fine.”

Among the other squads affected include AF Corse and Team WRT, although both teams’ programs between the WEC and GTWC Europe are even more separated when compared to Garage 59’s.