SRO Blancpain GT Series Cancels North American Race at COTA in March; Pirelli World Challenge Season Opener Entries Continue Gaining Momentum |
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Topics: Blancpain GT Series
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Tom Blattler
Pirelli World Challenge
29 January 2016
For Immediate Release
AUSTIN, Tex. (January 29, 2016) – SRO Blancpain GT Series announced today it must cancel its six-hour endurance round set for March 3-6 at the Circuit of the Americas as part of the 2016 Pirelli World Challenge season opening weekend.
The six-hour race was scheduled to be the North American debut for the series with the introduction of International GT Challenge.
The Pirelli World Challenge kickoff event continues to gain momentum with all seven categories competing on the state-of-the-art, world-class 3.427-mile racing circuit located just west of Austin, the state capital of Texas.
“The SRO has confirmed the cancellation of their 2016 North American Blancpain GT debut race at COTA,” said Greg Gill, President and CEO of WC Vision, producers of the Pirelli World Challenge road racing series. “We, as a Series, are very disappointed by this development, and we are especially disappointed for the competitors and teams from the USA who had entered the event. However, we understand the reasons behind the difficult decision the SRO Blancpain organization was forced to make.
“WC Vision and Pirelli World Challenge has over 75 cars already entered to race at COTA and we look forward to an excellent season opener in March. An updated event schedule will be released this coming week.”
In a recently released statement by Stephane Ratel, Founder and CEO SRO Motorsports Group, he explained the cancellation.
“Despite interest from a good number of American teams for our proposed event, the difficulty we had to motivate European teams to cross the Atlantic ahead of an extremely competitive Blancpain season, convinced us it was better to postpone the introduction of the American round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge to October 2017, at a time when both American and European teams will have finished their respective seasons and be ready for a Grand GT final.”
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Contact: Greg Gill, greggill@wcvision.com
Tom Blattler, tblattler@wcvision.com, 317-525-5692