Ben Miles

2024 IMSA Sportscar Championship calendar | GRR

The IMSA Sportscar Championship has revealed its 2024 calendar, featuring a race around the streets of Detroit and a new endurance race at the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

There are also changes to the event at Mosport and the traditional GT-only race at Lime Rock Park has been dropped in order to facilitate a return to Motor City. There a 100-minute sprint race will be held on the downtown street circuit used for IndyCar for the first time in 2023, for just the GTP and GTD classes.

The longer race at Indianapolis will become part of the Endurance Cup series, expanding that to five rounds alongside Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans. IMSA returned to Indianapolis this year for the first time since 2014 with a two-hour 40-minute race, influenced by Roger Penske’s takeover of the iconic track.

As usual with IMSA, not all classes will compete at every round, but six of the 11 races will have all four – GTP, LMP2, GTD Pro and GTD – with the LMP3 category leaving the series at the end of 2023.

GTD and GTD Pro will have ten rounds in total, while GTP cars compete in nine and LMP2 seven. For the first time since the introduction of the DPi cars in 2017, LMP2 machinery will compete for outright victory at the only round held outside of the USA, at Mosport, Canada.

The series’ trip to Virginia is now the only standalone GT event, taking place in a large gap in the middle of the season between the Road America race at the start of August and the Indianapolis race at the end of September.

The season begins with its traditional trip to Daytona toward the end of January with the usual Floridian swing of the season completing with the Sebring 12 Hours – which will again compete as a standalone event after the ending of a partnership with ACO that saw the World Endurance Championship race on the Friday.

Long Beach will take its traditional spot, as a support race for IndyCar, in April before Laguna Seca’s round in May. With the Le Mans 24 Hours taking place on the third weekend of June in 2024, the series’ return to Detroit on 1st June won’t leave teams unable to attend Le Mans test day.

The Six Hours of the Glen, now the midpoint of the Endurance Cup, takes place on the last weekend of June before the GTD and LMP2 cars head to Canada. Road America, VIR and Indianapolis fill August and September before the season finishes at Road Atlanta for Petit Le Mans in October.