Britcar to support WEC at Spa
Britcar will support the World Endurance Championship for the first time next season with a visit to Spa.
Two non-championship races will take place at the Spa WEC weekend on 23-25 April next year. Qualifying will be on the Thursday, with two 50-minute races, one on the Friday and the other on the Saturday. The races will be open to any car that complies with regulations for class 1-7 of Britcar and a large entry is anticipated.
It will be the first time Britcar has run an overseas event since Claire Hedley took over the management of the championship for 2016. “We’re over the moon,” said Hedley. “It’s a great opportunity for us and puts us on the world stage. It’s amazing, we were approached by them [WEC organisers] because of our reputation – we put on a good show and have good grids.”
Hedley says interest has been “phenomenal” after receiving a significant number of enquiries from prospective entries in the first 24 hours after the races were announced.
“I’ve had European teams approach me already – we’ve had some teams run with us in the past and they’ve said they’re coming back,” she added.
The Spa event will follow the first round of the main Britcar Endurance Championship, which is due to take place at Donington Park on 10 April. The provisional calendar also features three visits to Silverstone – two of which will be on the Grand Prix circuit – alongside rounds at Snetterton and Brands Hatch.
Britcar will also introduce a new Trophy category for 2020, which a number of drivers have signed up for. This category, for production-based cars, will run in additional races in order to be separate from the GT machinery in the main Endurance Championship.
Generally the Trophy races will take place on the same weekend as Endurance contests – the Endurance races will typically be on Saturdays followed by the 50-minute Trophy bouts on Sundays.
“Over the two championships, we’ve got 15 drivers signed up already and a lot of those are for the Trophy – people have seen it as a great opportunity,” said Hedley. “The Trophy was a gut feeling – we thought there was a market for production cars, but when you amalgamate them with GT cars they want to win races outright, so we had the idea of splitting them up and opening it up to smaller hot hatches.”