The European Le Mans Series has updated their racing schedule for 2020, with one of the races switching country.
This is all due to the COVID-19 situation, that the race planned for Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya later this month, has been moved to the Paul Ricard track in France.
There is too much uncertainty about Barcelona currently, with a lot of COVID cases in the area, so LMEM, the organizers behind the European Le Mans Series, would rather decide the change now, instead of the week leading up to it – or the race week itself, in case the situation doesn’t improve in the area.
The race weekend will be run as a three-day event, with the unofficial testing being run on Thursday, free practice Friday and with Qualifying and race being run Saturday – just like we saw in Spain last year, where the race was run on Saturday evening. The time table is not out yet, so we don’t know if it will be an afternoon race or an evening race.
This will be the second race this year, to be run at the French Paul Ricard venue near Le Castellet town. The opening round of the championship was also held there – but the big advantage about the track is that it’s isolated from everything, so it can be run without being in contact with many people outside the race series itself.
By moving the race instead of cancelling it, there will still be three ELMS races run prior to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in September, which some of the teams will participate in.
The second round of this year’s ELMS are being run at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium this weekend, where the unofficial sessions were run on Wednesday, before the race weekend itself starts tomorrow, Friday.
