On Sunday evening, at the 2015 Pirelli World Challenge awards banquet, WC Vision announced the 2016 schedule, which features 11 race weekends.
Unchanged from this year, the season will begin at Circuit of The Americas, on March 3-6, with all seven categories racing at the track near Austin, TX. Adding to the excitement, this round will be joined by the Blancpain GT Series.
Five of the 11 weekends will have the Pirelli World Challenge as the headline event, whilst the other six see the series supporting the Verizon IndyCar Series.
Next on the calendar is St. Petersburg, FL on March 11-13, the first of the IndyCar collaboration weekends. This trend is continued with the Long Beach, CA rounds (April 15-17) and Barber Motorsport Park (near Birmingham, AL) races on April 22-24.
After this, the series heads to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in Toronto, Canada, on May 19-22, before a new addition at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut the following weekend.
Whilst Pirelli World Challenge has been to Road America multiple times before, 2016’s event on June 23-26 will now be held supporting IndyCar, when it returns to the Wisconsin circuit.
After a break of over a month, the next round is at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on July 29-30, ahead of a August round, of which neither the venue nor dates have been announced, but is likely to be at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah.
The season will end considerably later next year, with the penultimate rounds at Sonoma Raceway near San Francisco, CA, scheduled for September 16-18, again supporting IndyCar. The season finale remains at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and will take place sometime in October.
Meanwhile, the WC Vision board all accepted Scott Bove‘s resignation of CEO on Saturday. For the time being, Greg Gill has been selected as his temporary replacement.
“In 2015, the Pirelli World Challenge brought outstanding competition and variety to the North American motorsports landscape,” commented Gill. “In 2016, the PWC schedule again should provide the racing fans at many of the world’s most iconic road racing venues with over 20 auto manufacturers in action. I want to thank the 11 racing facilities for their hospitality in hosting the 2016 Pirelli World Challenge events.”
