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IMS lands 6-hour endurance race on 2024 IMSA calendar

nathan brown, indianapolis star
·2 min read
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Following the series' return later this year for IMSA's first appearance at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since 2014 for a traditional sprint race (two hours and 40 minutes in length), the Racing Capital of the World has landed one of the premier endurance dates on IMSA's 2024 calendar, the series announced Friday.

Following its return to the Racing Capital of the World for a sprint race later this year, IMSA will run a 6-hour race at IMS as part of its 2024 schedule.
Following its return to the Racing Capital of the World for a sprint race later this year, IMSA will run a 6-hour race at IMS as part of its 2024 schedule.

And though it may not be the six-hour, 42-minute affair that would've paid tribute to the length of the first Indianapolis 500 at the track back in 1911 that IMS president Doug Boles once proposed, next year's six-hour event -- one of five endurance races on IMSA's 2024 calendar -- will only further raise the level of the race weekend's importance in the sportscar landscape.

Next year's IMSA date at IMS, to be held Sept. 20-22, will host all four classes in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the GTP cars that can also run at Le Mans, LMP2, GTD PRO and GTD, as well as IMSA's Michelin Pilot Challenge cars (the Grand Sport and Touring Car classes) for a two-hour race the Lamborghini Super Trofeo series, which will hold a pair of 50-minute races across the weekend.

The elevation of IMS's race weekend to a six-hour endurance race gives IMSA one more event to add to its Endurance Cup than in 2023, a schedule that included the longstanding endurance races at Daytona (the Rolex 24), Sebring (a 12-hour race), Watkins Glen (six hours) and Road Atlanta (10 hours). In order to allow for the IMS event's increased race time (and inevitably, distance) without drastically increasing budgets for its teams, IMSA adjusted some of its race run times. Both schedules for the GTP class in 2023 and 2024, for example, include 10 events, but the 2023 trip for the top class to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (a two-hour, 40-minute race) has been swapped for one to Detroit in concert with IndyCar's post-500 race weekend that will shave an hour off this year's CTMP race length.

Similar to this year, IMSA's IMS visit in 2024 falls one week after the end of IndyCar's season-finale (next year on the streets of Nashville Sept. 15). Next year, though, the race is likely to feature the handful of full-season IndyCar drivers that serve as IMSA endurance drivers for a couple of (or all of) those endurance events throughout the season. This year, that list includes Scott Dixon, Colton Herta, Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves. Next year, Romain Grosjean has been slated to run endurance events for Lamborghini's car it will enter in the top class of the series, too.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IMSA: IMS lands expanded 6-hour endurance race on 2024 calendar