It’s going to be a different European Le Mans Series and Micheline Le Mans Cup schedule, once the 2022 season gets underway.
The season will start at Paul Ricard in France, with both the official tests, and the first race weekend in April.
Next round will be Imola, which the series last visited in 2016. That race replaces Monza, as the Italian round of the Championship.
There will be Le Mans break for the rest of May and the whole of June for the ELMS cars, while LMC will have their two Road To Le Mans races at Le Mans, with the return of Hungaroring in July. It’s 8 years since the last LMP outing at that track, but it’s going to be an interesting change for the drivers.
It will be Barcelona on 28 August, with Spa Francorchamps one month later.
The season will once again finish off in Portimao, in the middle of October.
So there won’t be any Monza nor Red Bull Ring in 2022. But it’s not the first time, that the series misses Red Bull Ring. They missed out on the 2019 and 2020 schedule too, before returning in 2021.
There will be several back to back weekends for ELMS and the FIA World Endurance Championship. Spa Francorchamps FIA WEC and Imola ELMS will be two weekends in a row, just like ELMS Hungaroring and FIA WEC Monza. That will make it more difficult, but certainly not impossible for the teams to do both series, with the same car.
The full ELMS and LMC schedule for 2022 looks like this:
11-12 April 2022 – Official Tests – Le Castellet (FRA) – ELMS/LMC
16-17 April 2022 – 4 Hours of Le Castellet (FRA) – ELMS/LMC
14-15 May 2022 – 4 Hours of Imola (ITA) – ELMS/LMC
9-11 June 2022 – Road To Le Mans (FRA) – LMC
02-03 July 2022 – 4 Hours of Hungaroring (HUN) – ELMS/LMC
27-28 August 2022 – 4 Hours of Barcelona (ESP) – ELMS
24-25 September 2022 – 4 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps (BEL) – ELMS/LMC
15-16 October 2022 – 4 Hours of Portimão (PRT) – ELMS/LMC