The World Touring Car Championship has confirmed that its trip to the United States this season has been cancelled and replaced with a second round in China.
The reason given for replacing the category’s third trip to the Sonoma circuit is a logistical issue preventing cars being shipped from California to China in good time for the Shanghai event on 11-12 October.
The replacement event will take part at the Goldenport Motor Park in Beijing on 4-5 October, before the series moves on to Shanghai.
“We had to face a logistic challenge and after consulting WTCC stakeholders, we went through all possible scenarios, including a date change or air freight, but we came to the conclusion that keeping Sonoma on schedule was not viable,” said WTCC promoter Francois Ribeiro.
“The Chinese Touring Car Championship promoter, our partner in China, has quickly reacted to change its schedule and put together an alternative event at Beijing, the week before Shanghai. This will not only allow WTCC to race in the two main provinces of China, and keep raising WTCC profile in the most important car market in the world, but will also simplify logistics and save budget for the teams.”
The Goldenport circuit previously hosted a round of the FIA GT1 World Championship in 2011.
