At the start of every season in recent times I’ve let out a sigh, one that involves the exhalation of more air each time. Each year my exasperation grows as I go into another new season knowing that I won’t be reporting on a major international endurance race in my home country.
How can that be, I ask, that we don’t have such an event in the United Kingdom? The 50,000 Brits who travel to the Le Mans 24 Hours each year feel the same way.
To my mind it’s not right that a nation so central to international motorsport and one that has supplied more winners of the Le Mans 24 Hours than any other has not had a place on the calendar of any of the long-distance sportscar series since 2019. A big enduro on these shores - a round of the old world sportscar championship, the new one in the form of the World Endurance Championship, the FIA GT Championship or whatever the Le Mans Series was called at a time - was pretty much a constant during the first 40 odd years of my motorsport consciousness.
Since I started following the sport in the late-ish 1970s there have only been a couple of years - 1993 and ’94 - when that was not the case. And that was in the dark days following the death of Group C and the old world series before the relaunch of GT racing under the auspices of the BPR Organisation in the mid-1990s got up a head of steam.
That’s why I’m something approaching overjoyed that Silverstone will put that right next September when it hosts a round of the European Le Mans Series, bringing to an end my five years of pre-season laments. I can’t be more committed than that because it’s not the race either I nor, I’m sure, many of the 50,000 pilgrims to the Circuit de la Sarthe each summer wanted. A round of the WEC is what we would really like to see gracing the majesty of the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit.
But the ELMS is better than nothing, and more importantly it’s a start. Silverstone boss Stuart Pringle makes no secret of the fact that he wants the WEC back at some point. He hopes, and so do I, that next year’s Silverstone 4 Hours on 14 September will be a step down that road. The ELMS, of course, is run by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, the organiser at Le Mans and, along with the FIA, of the WEC too.
We all know why Silverstone disappeared from both the WEC and ELMS calendars after 2019, along with the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup and its sister Sprint Cup series. The COVID pandemic played havoc with the international motorsport calendars in 2020 and on into ’21 and beyond. That only the Sprint Cup has returned to our shores is down to a number of factors.
Silverstone could have made a quick WEC return in 2020 but lost out to Spa to host the first post-lockdown race in the August of that year — and it was the Belgian venue’s by right because it had been due to hold a race in May. The problem for British fans of sportscar racing came when for 2021 the WEC downsized from eight to six races in light of the economic challenges resulting from COVID. When the music stopped, Silverstone didn’t have its bum on a seat.
The continued absence of the GTWCE Endurance Cup, known up until 2019 as the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, is more complicated. The schedule returned to its regular five races in ’21, but Silverstone was missing from a series of which it had been one of the mainstays.
Two one-hour sprints are different to a full-blown enduro of four, six or however many hours. Sportscar racing is, for me, a long-distance discipline
Brexit played a role here, series boss Stephane Ratel revealed at the end of 2020 when the final calendar for the following year was confirmed. He explained that there was resistance from smaller teams racing on the GTWCE undercard — the series comes as the headliner of a full package of events — to undertake a trip across the Channel with the increases in red tape resulting from the UK’s exit from the European Union.
It wasn’t a problem for the teams racing in the main event, which is why the Sprint Cup made a quick return to Britain with its annual Brands Hatch fixture in August 2021 and has been back every year since in its traditional early-season slot. The Sprint Cup grid travels alone and sits at the top of a bill made up of national-level British series at Brands.
We should be thankful that some kind of sportscar racing returned to Dear Old Blighty with the Sprint Cup. I wouldn’t diss the fixture at Brands: what’s not to like a short and sharp two-day meeting at what for me will always be the world’s greatest circuit?
I’m just saying that two one-hour sprints are different to a full-blown enduro of four, six or however many hours. Sportscar racing is, for me, a long-distance discipline, and has to be when its premier race, that one in France on the middle weekend of June, goes twice around the clock.
I’m not sure about the Endurance Cup returning to Britain any time soon, but there has to be a chance for the WEC. That, however, is probably going to revolve around an expansion of the calendar from the eight races to which we finally returned this year. Series bosses have talked about increasing the number of rounds to nine or perhaps even 10, though the manufacturers are urging caution and conservatism right now.
There are only three races in Europe — the same number as in the inaugural year of the ‘new’ WEC in 2012, in case anyone was wondering — and they take place in April, May and June. So Silverstone would have to fit in there somewhere. A slot in Spring wouldn’t be the track’s favoured date: it should be remembered that Silverstone lobbied for an end-of-summer race when we - or more pertinently the fans - were having to put up with snow in April.
It got it for the 2018/19 super-season as the WEC transitioned into what turned out to be a short-lived winter-season format. But with the series having returned to a traditional-style calendar it wouldn’t be possible now. Pringle very much understands that and the constraints facing the WEC as it builds a calendar. But it would still be a struggle to squeeze Silverstone into a period when the teams need a bit of free air leading up to Le Mans in June.
There are many questions that need asking about the WEC schedule. Does it require more than eight races? That’s a big one. Another is whether it really needs two events in front of minuscule crowds in the Middle East, though, of course, we know that money talks.
And does Britain have a god given right to host big sportscar races just because it pretty much always has? My heart says yes, my head says no on this one, so the answer is a ‘probably not’. But that’s not going to stop me hoping that Silverstone will be back on the WEC calendar in 2026, ’27 or whenever.
