IMSA finale moves to November with 24 Hours of Le Mans postponed from June to August

Associated PressMar 4, 2021, 11:00 AM EST
Le Mans 24 Hour Race
Gerlach Delissen/Corbis via Getty Images
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LE MANS, France — The 24 Hours of Le Mans has been postponed from June to August in the hope that fans can attend by then, organizers said Thursday.

The iconic race was scheduled to take place on June 12-13 but was moved to Aug. 21-22. In a domino effect of the move, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Series will move two races, including its Motul Petit Le Mans season finale.

“Although it was a tough decision to make, it is the right one. Holding the 24 Hours of Le Mans behind closed doors for the second year running would be unthinkable,” said Pierre Fillon, the president of 24 Hours of Le Mans organizer the Automobile Club de l’Ouest. “We are working very hard to put on a safe event, with all the necessary health precautions in place.”

The race was first held in 1923, and in 2019 it drew 252,500 spectators. There were none in 2020 when the 24 Hours of Le Mans was postponed by three months because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Toyota Gazoo’s No. 8 car comfortably won last year to secure a third straight victory, with Swiss co-driver Sebastien Buemi and Japan’s Kazuki Nakajima also winning for a third straight year.

It was also a third consecutive win for Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi and Japan’s Kazuki Nakajima driving. Brendon Hartley was the other driver, having replaced two-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans being postponed already has had an impact on IMSA, which announced that its Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway and the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta would be moved.

The new Le Mans date conflicts with the originally scheduled VIR race, which was to be shown live on NBC. Because several teams and drivers plan to compete at Le Mans, the WeatherTech Championship race now will be run on Saturday, Oct. 9, airing live on NBC as part of a new VIR event weekend Oct. 8-10.

The 24th Motul Petit Le Mans season finale that was to occur Oct. 9 will move to Saturday, Nov. 13 and also will include a live, three-hour NBC network television window.

The race will include five WeatherTech Championship classes – Daytona Prototype international (DPi), LMP2, LMP3, GTLM and GTD – and close out both the 2021 WeatherTech Championship and IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup seasons. The event weekend will run from Nov. 10-13.

“Given the momentum we are carrying in regard to television viewership, it is important for us to preserve live, NBC network windows,” IMSA president John Doonan said in a release. “Holding our season finale in November proved successful last year in Sebring, and we have every reason to believe we can be successful again this November at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. As always, we are grateful to all of our stakeholders – and particularly our promoter and television partners – for their flexibility and understanding as we maneuver through these changes.”

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship already had adjusted the date of its Detroit Grand Prix, which will be held over two weekends for the first time in order to avoid a conflict with the 24 Hours of Le Mans’ original date.

Roger Penske vows new downtown Detroit GP will be bigger than the Super Bowl for city

By Jun 1, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT
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DETROIT – He helped spearhead bringing the town a Super Bowl 17 years ago, but Roger Penske believes the reimagined Chevrolet Detroit GP is his greatest gift to the Motor City.

“It’s bigger than the Super Bowl from an impact within the city,” Penske told NBC Sports. “Maybe not with the sponsors and TV, but for the city of Detroit, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl.

“We’ve got to give back individually and collectively, and I think we as a company in Michigan and in Detroit, it’s something we know how to do. It shows we’re committed. Someone needs to take that flag and run it down through town. And that’s what we’re trying to do as a company. We’re trying to give back to the city.”

After 30 years of being run on Belle Isle, the race course has been moved to a new nine-turn, 1.7-mile downtown layout that will be the centerpiece of an event weekend that is designed to promote a festival and community atmosphere.

There will be concerts in the adjacent Hart Plaza. Local businesses from Detroit’s seven districts have been invited to hawk their wares to new clientele. Boys and Girls Clubs from the city have designed murals that will line the track’s walls with images of diversity, inclusion and what Detroit means through the eyes of youth.

And in the biggest show of altruism, more than half the circuit will be open for free admission. The track is building 4-foot viewing platforms that can hold 150 people for watching the long Jefferson Avenue straightaway and other sections of the track.

Detroit GP chairman Bud Denker, a longtime key lieutenant across Penske’s various companies, has overseen more than $20 million invested in infrastructure.

The race is essentially Penske’s love letter to the city where he made much of his fame as one of Detroit’s most famous automotive icons, both as a captain of industry with a global dealership network and as a racing magnate (who just won his record 19th Indy 500 with Josef Newgarden breaking through for his first victory on the Brickyard oval).

During six decades in racing, Penske, 86, also has run many racetracks (most notably Indianapolis Motor Speedway but also speedways in Michigan, California and Pennsylvania), and much of that expertise has been applied in Detroit.

“And then the ability for us to reach out to our sponsor base, and then the business community, which Bud is tied in with the key executives in the city of Detroit, bringing them all together,” Penske said. “It makes a big difference.

“The Super Bowl is really about the people that fly in for the Super Bowl. It’s a big corporate event, and the tickets are expensive. And the TV is obviously the best in the world. What we’ve done is taken that same playbook but made it important to everyone in Detroit. Anyone that wants to can come to the race for free, can stand on a platform or they can buy a ticket and sit in the grandstands or be in a suite. It’s really multiple choice, but it is giving it to the city of Detroit. I think it’s important when you think of these big cities across the country today that are having a lot of these issues.”

Denker said the Detroit Grand Prix is hoping for “an amazingly attended event” but is unsure of crowd estimates with much of the track offering free viewing. The race easily could handle a crowd of at least 50,000 daily (which is what the Movement Music Festival draws in Hart Plaza) and probably tens of thousands more in a sprawling track footprint along the city’s riverwalk.

Penske is hoping for a larger crowd than Belle Isle, which was limited to about 30,000 fans daily because of off-site parking and restricted fan access at a track that was located in a public park.

The downtown course will have some unique features, including a “split” pit lane on an all-new concrete (part of $15 million spent on resurfaced roads, new barriers and catchfencing … as well as 252 manhole covers that were welded down).

A $5 million, 80,000-square-foot hospitality chalet will be located adjacent to the paddock and pit area. The two-story structure, which was imported from the 16th hole of the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, will offer 70 chalets (up from 23 suites at Belle Isle last year). It was built by InProduction, the same company that installed the popular HyVee-branded grandstands and suites at Iowa Speedway last year.

Penske said the state, city, county and General Motors each owned parts of the track, and their cooperation was needed to move streetlights and in changing apexes of corners. Denker has spent the past 18 months meeting with city council members who represent Detroit’s seven districts, along with Mayor Mike Duggan. Penske said the local support could include an appearance by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer.

Denker and Detroit GP  president Michael Montri were inspired to move the Detroit course downtown after attending the inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We saw what an impact it made on that city in August of 2021 and we came back from there and said boy could it ever work to bring it downtown in Detroit again,” Denker said. “We’ve really involved the whole community of Detroit, and the idea of bringing our city together is what the mayor and city council and our governor are so excited about. The dream we have is now coming to fruition.

“When you see the infrastructure downtown and the bridges over the roads we’ve built and the graphics, and everything is centered around the Renaissance Center as your backdrop, it’s just amazing.”