There were plans underway to change this month’s 24 Hours of Spa to 25 hours, but it now seems that the plans have been abandoned.
It was also announced that the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup that will be holding double points will be held behind closed doors from October 24th to 25th.
Laurent Gaudin who is the World Endurance race manager said that the Stephane Ratel Organisation believed to the end that it would be possible to allow a limited crowd to attend the race which had been rescheduled from its normal July period to this month due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We tried everything to manoeuvre this huge event through the various protocols and very strict health constraints,” Gaudin explained.
“After multiple proposals, with the requirements increasing and the volume of public authorised falling, we had to face facts and the whole team made the sad decision to lay down arms. We are truly sorry for all our fans and I have no doubt that we will face criticism, but SRO is not above the law.”
It had also been announced that the 24 hour race would be extended by an hour to be the 25 Hours of Spa as Stephanie Ratel who is the series boss said that he wanted the event to be ‘a race to remember even in the years to come’. The change of the race duration to 25 hours, would have seen the change in the clock on the Sunday morning of the race. The addition of an extra hour would have the race start on 3:30pm on Saturday and end on 3:30pm on Sunday.
Laurent Gaudin later explained the move to add an extra hour to the Spa race was part of a plan to give fresh impetus to the October edition.
“We were optimistic and we thought, a little naively, that the disease would be behind us by this time of the year,” he said.
“With this not being the case and with no fans able to join us, we have elected to revert to the original format.”
The race now will follow its normal schedule, where it will be starting at 3:30pm on Saturday and end at 2:30pm on Sunday. The final entry list of the cars to be competing in the race is yet to be announced, as 50 cars took part in the last week’s official pe-event test at Spa.
