By 
IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship announced its event calendar for 2024 on Friday with a couple of notable changes.
The first alterations in the endurance racing series headlined by the hybrid GTP cars and its factory GT competition involve the return of the Detroit Grand Prix after a one-year hiatus and the deletion of Lime Rock Park, which has hosted one of IMSA’s popular GT-only events, to keep the series’ total event count at 11.
IMSA’s renewed relationship with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will also see its upcoming 2h40m race in September increase to six hours in 2024, which further expands its offerings of long events to five, including the Rolex 24 At Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, Six Hours of Watkins Glen, and the 10 Hour Petit Le Mans season finale at Road Atlanta.
Familiar stops on the streets of Long Beach, the winding road courses of Laguna Seca, Road America, Canada’s Mosport, and the lone remaining GT-only weekend at VIR cap a busy year for the growing championship.
“Undoubtedly one of the key elements that has attracted our corporate partners and 18 automotive manufacturers is the annual schedule of events that IMSA is able to deliver,” said IMSA President John Doonan. “The venues and events we visit on an annual basis are world-renowned and beloved by race fans and competitors everywhere. We are proud to unveil our 2024 calendar which once again delivers IMSA racing to vitally important markets throughout North America.”
As IMSA has done for many years, it has 11 total events to run, but that doesn’t mean its four WeatherTech Championship classes will race 11 times.
GTP will race on nine occasions, with Mosport and VIR as the exceptions. LMP2 has seven dates, minus Long Beach, Laguna Seca, Detroit, and VIR. GTD Pro is racing 10 times with Long Beach as its only absence, and GTD has 10 as well as it skips Detroit.
With the incoming factory IMSA GTP effort from Lamborghini, the series will feature five marquee brands in its top prototype class where the Italian marque will join Acura, BMW, Cadillac, and Porsche in the quest to claim the coveted Manufacturers’ championship spread from January through October.
IMSA GTD Pro class is also waiting to welcome a major name to the factory wars as Ford, with its new Mustang GT3 model, is headed into battle against Corvette, Lexus, Ferrari, and Mercedes, and the Blue Oval will have Pro-Am representation in GTD as well where a wider array of marques, including Acura, BMW, Lamborghini, and others are in the mix.
An overarching change for the WeatherTech Championship in 2024 involves its reduction from five classes to four as the Pro-Am LMP3 category has been returned to its place as a training platform that runs in one of IMSA’s feeder series.
Despite the loss of LMP3, a spike in car counts, with LMP2 as the primary contributor of new entries, is anticipated in both Rolex 24 and season-long entry lists.
