r/Sportscar_Racing Jun 03 '24

Intercontinental GT Challenge Nurburgring 24 Hours explains decision to end race early amid backlash

https://www.motorsport.com/endurance/news/nurburgring-24-hours-explains-decision-to-end-race-early-amid-backlash/10619177/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=RSS-ALL&utm_term=News&utm_content=www
51 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

79

u/h0pefiend Jun 03 '24

Damned if you do damned if you don’t. I love this sport but if the worst happened because of insisting on racing blind on probably the most dangerous currently active track it would be horrible obviously. Hard to seriously give a track criticism for making a call based on safety.

15

u/Whomstevest Jun 03 '24

Judging by the onboards of the laps at the end under safety car it wasnt really an if

36

u/drew_galbraith Jun 03 '24

its been foggy/too rainy a lot the last few years, I know its hard to move major events, but they should look at moving to August when there are less events, and from all I can find looking stuff up, Much less of a chance of getting fogged out.

EDIT: to add, Im glad they put safety above entertainment, but think they should move the event to prevent the issue.

13

u/Gimli_Starkimarm Jun 04 '24

A whole DTM Event got canceled due to weather „later in the year“.

It’s the Eifel. It can have shitty Weather all the time. Same with Spa…

3

u/mats_f9 Jun 04 '24

Same mountain range, sam~ish weather

5

u/mats_f9 Jun 04 '24

It's not moved to later in the year because of the marshalls which are there voluntarily and would need to take a day of from work.
The way it is right now is that the race is scheduled late in May because of a couple of national holidays which omit the need for marshalls to take a day off from their everyday work. If the date for the race would be moved there might be a shortage of available marshalls and with the Nürburgring being a very long race track a lot of them are needed to guarantee safe racing.

1

u/DummyThicccThrowaway Jun 06 '24

Thanks for this information, never would've known otherwise

3

u/ashyjay Jun 04 '24

I think it'll depend on money, as the ring gets real busy in summer, and they can make a boat ton of money from touristenfahrten passes (30-35 euro a lap and no one ever does just one).

Next year it is planned to run end of June just after LeMans, September could work as well, as it'll still be warm enough, although NLS runs until November where it may as well be an ice race.

6

u/Makaveli84 Jun 04 '24

You all forget about 2021 and the restart.

8

u/CoffeeSnobsUnite Jun 04 '24

Those were absolutely unsafe conditions to even try and race in. As disappointed as I was in it only making it 7 hours I couldn’t fault them for not going back green. You couldn’t see marshal post to marshal post on most of the circuit and just imagine the risk to any safety vehicle trying to navigate the track. The entire circuit would have been code 60 pretty quickly. The weathers been playing a major role the last several years so I agree it may be time to consider moving the date until later in the summer.

5

u/PI-E0423 Jun 04 '24

Moving it to later in the summer doesnt help. Just look at the covid n24h in september

It was red flagged due to for.

As someone living in this region, let me tell you: you cant predict the weather here.

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '24 edited Jul 24 '24

[deleted]

8

u/ManaKaua Jun 04 '24

The dates are already set for the next 5 years. Not even 2 weeks before is it possible to say whether it will be a good or bad day for racing.

They also were damn unlucky hitting the one bad weekend with the weeks before and at least the week after being very sunny.

4

u/PI-E0423 Jun 04 '24

The race isnt a thing Planet a week in advance. It is set many months beforehand.

Like stated before, they once moped it to much later in the year with the same result.

But even then your Statement is wrong, weather forecast was absolute bollocks. It said we were having a dry day while we were standing in the rain. Even the rain-radar was not showing any rain when we were being soaked.

1

u/SpeedyWebDuck Jun 04 '24

Stupid headline, what backlash? By whom?