Brazil replaced by COTA

There won’t be any FIA World Endurance Championship race in Brazil in February 2020.

The 2020 race was initially announced way back in March 2018, but there have been major issues with the race promoter, that the WEC organizers didn’t see any other solution than cancelling the race in Brazil and moving it to another track.

The WEC organizers have worked on several solutions for weeks, which has been quite a bit of a puzzle. The race prior to the Brazil race will run in less than 2 weeks’ time, with the subsequent race at Sebring being run in March. So the replacement race would have to be somewhere on that route, and the weather would have to play ball too.

There were talks about Kyalami in South Africa, but Circuit Of The Americas in Texas has been chosen as the replacement, which is also known for hosting Formula 1 races, and previous FIA WEC races too, before the series moved to Sebring as the North American round on the schedule.

Spirit Of Race Ferrari #54
Photo: Marius Hecker / AdrenalMedia.com

But that will result in a change of date. Due to the Super Bowl final in the USA, it wasn’t possible to run on the original date on 1-2 February, but on 22-23 February. The weekend of 14-15 February has a Formula E race to be run, and there are drivers doing both. So that wasn’t an option. Why 8-9 February wasn’t in the running is not explained.

The new date results in a date clash between the FIA World Endurance Championship race at COTA, and the season finale in the Asian Le Mans Series at Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Thailand. That will cause issues for three drivers so far, i.e. the two AF Corse drivers, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Davide Rigon, who race in AF Corse #51/Spirit Of Race #51 and AF Corse #71/HubAuto #27 respectively, plus Ross Gunn in D’Station Racing #77 and Aston Martin Racing #98 in WEC.

The next round of the FIA World Endurance Championship will run on 14 December 2019.

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