In a snap press conference held in the Apex tent at Sebring International Raceway Friday morning (March 15) where stakeholders normally gather to eat, IMSA officially announced the 2025 schedules for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge. The move was seen as a rather substantial surprise since schedules are not usually revealed until the State of the Sport address in the summer.
Given the scheduling issues in 2024, it made sense to IMSA to get the schedules out as soon as possible.
“On behalf of my teammates at IMSA, I am proud to be able to announce our schedule for 2025 at such an early date,” stated IMSA president John Doonan. “This was made possible through a great spirit of collaboration with our promoter partners, and we are grateful to them for enabling us to make our 2025 plans known today. Putting next year’s schedule into everybody’s hands so soon allows fans, competitors and partners to get well ahead in planning for an amazing 2025 season, even with so much of our 2024 season still to come.”
The move comes after a series of clashes came to light. There are three schedule clashes this year between WeatherTech and the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). Those weekends are Long Beach, Laguna Seca, and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. These IMSA weekends conflict with the WEC race weekends at Imola, Spa-Francorchamps and Sao Paolo, respectively. The result is that a number of teams have had to come up with alternate plans for those races.
For instance, The Heart of Racing’s Alex Riberas was supposed to be full-time in their GTD Pro Aston Martin. However, the team announced in February that Riberas will focus on the LMGT3 class in the WEC on the three conflict weekends. As a result, teammate Ross Gunn will challenge for the GTD Pro title solo.
For the headlining championship, there are very few changes for 2025. The season will have 11 race weekends, 10 in the United States and one at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Ontario. The season will once again start with the Rolex 24 at Daytona the weekend of Jan. 24-26 with the ROAR Before the 24 the weekend before. That date had already been confirmed by Daytona International Speedway as ticket renewal notices for next year have already been sent.
There is one weekend change of note. Long Beach is scheduled to be a week earlier next year. That would put the race back on the typical weekend. This year’s IMSA race at Long…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …