For Canadian fans, information included in the release of IMSA’s schedule for 2024, there was a bit of bad news as we discovered the premiere GTP class will not be appearing at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July. While the Weathertech Sportscar Championship will still be here, the race will feature the LMP2, GTD Pro and GTD classes. The IMSA undercard should also include the Michelin Pilot Challenge.

Being as disappointed as the rest of the Canadian fans, editors at RaceCanada reached out to IMSA and received this explanation: “A key factor in setting our schedules each year is to respect our teams' and manufacturers' operating budgets. With the addition of the 100-minute Detroit event and the expansion of the Indianapolis event to six hours, it was necessary to remove the GTP class from the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in 2024. We anticipate substantially expanded fields for the LMP2 and GTD PRO class and at least as many GTD cars if not more, and expect another highly entertaining event at CTMP next year.”

While this might not be the answer some of you would like, from the point of view of both teams and manufacturers, the simple addition of another six-hour endurance event adds incredible costs to operating budgets (something this writer is closely familiar with) especially when you start the year with the Rolex 24 followed by the Sebring 12 – a full season’s racing in just six weeks. Add a second 6-hour event in addition to The Glen, the expansion of Indianapolis to a 6 Hour race, plus the season-ending 10 hours of Petit Le Mans and somewhere along the line, a decision must be made when the GTP teams are running budgets exponentially larger than other classes. 

There is of course, the simple economics of coming to race in Canada which has certainly affected the decisions of other major series and promoters - NASCAR Trucks, Trans-Am and SRO GT World come to mind and races in Canada have disappeared off the schedule completely. To their credit, IMSA is still supporting the market and it can be pointed out just with the news this week from AWA Racing, that GT car counts will be increasing and will give us more Canadian content to cheer on. Of course we anticipate – and hope for, increased car counts in LMP2 as well. With LMP3 losing it's place in the WeatherTech Series, at least two teams have already announced a move to the LMP2 class for 2024, as well the LMP2 class has been eliminated from the World Endurance Championship for 2024, meaning IMSA will be the only top class of racing for any of the teams unable or unwilling to make the move to Hypercar. 

IMSA also noted that this announcement was for the 2024 season only, and no decisions have been made for the schedule for 2025 and beyond.

Of course on a purely selfish note – considering that 2025 is a long way off, that the GTP teams decide after Detroit, that they really long for a return to a proper road course just east of Toronto.

In the meantime, thank you to IMSA for their quick reply to our enquiries, and we do look forward to seeing them next July.