Is Canada Underappreciated in International Motorsport?

Hello and welcome back to another edition of Steve’s Motorsport Blog.

I have had this post on the back burner for quite some time. I didn’t want it to come across as too complainy (I originally had this as a SPO, but changed my mind). It’s also a long one, so grab a coffee and buckle in!

I want to talk about the state of international motorsport in Canada. This post was catalyzed when IMSA announced that the Weathertech Series will only bring LMP2, GTD & GTD Pro north of the border in 2024 and beyond, and forgoing the headlining GTP class.

Canada has vastly contributed to international motorsport throughout the last 60-70 years; F1 Grand Prix dating back to the 60’s, the famous CanAM series during the 60’s & 70’s, plenty of talented drivers throughout the years and to today’s Multimatic race car design and manufacturing powerhouse.

Canada also has some excellent and storied racing venues. Which I will quickly detail here:

First and certainly the most important being Mosport (Canadian Tire Motorsports Park), is the country’s number 1 season-round venue (I can’t exactly say year-round, given our winters). It is the sportscar capital of Canada, being home to CanAM and now IMSA, in addition to hosting the first F1 Canadian Grand Prix.

Next being the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal; having been on the Formula 1 calendar for the better part of 50yrs since taking over from Mosport in the 1970’s. It’s been the sight of some incredible races over the years and continues to be one of the stable entries on the calendar. It was also briefly the sight of Grand AM and NASCAR XFinity series races during the 2000’s as well, as well has other series.

The Toronto Street circuit has been on the Indycar/CHAMP calendar for decades as well, and is another stable entry on their calendar, providing a challenge to every driver who races on it.

You would think given this steeped racing history, that you would believe that motorsports series would be lined up to bring their best and most important series north of the border. However, as we’ve seen in recent years, this has increasingly been the opposite. The latest drawbacks being:

• SRO GT World Challenge last came to Mosport in 2019*
• NASCAR Truck Series last came to Mosport in 2019*
• Trans-AM last came to Mosport in 2014 until coming back in 2024
• Nothing noteworthy racing at Mont-Tremblant since 2007

*NOTE: Reminder that 2020 and 2021 were years in which the border was closed, which made international events impossible to host. However that doesn’t explain them not coming back since.

Lastly, and the catalyst for me wanting to put out this post, is the decision by IMSA to not bring the GTP class for 2024 & 2025 editions of the Chevrolet Grand Prix and instead sending LMP2 with the GTD and GTD Pro classes only.

This latest blow is such a slap in the face to Canadian racing fans. People flocked to social media (myself included) to protest the change, and when they announced it again for 2025, CTMP locked the comment section so nobody would blast it.

Even Ron Fellows’ son commented on a different post saying they (CTMP) weren’t happy about it, and it wasn’t their decision, but IMSA’s. Clearly CTMP wanted to have the best of the best; IMSA has always sent the best prototypes in every season of ALMS/Weathertech since the series’ inauguration.

So why, now? Apparently the official answer is that the growing GTP & LMP2 grids are too big to accommodate at Mosport. That may be the case, but there was also the recent additions of Indianapolis and Detroit to the GTP calendars as a reason to keep the costs down by skipping Canada.

I welcome the Indianapolis addition, but the Detroit one baffles me. The only Big 3 representation in GTP are the Cadillac entries. I doubt Porsche, BMW, Lamborghini and Acura care for a race in Detroit when they’d rather have something more fancy like Long Beach as a more appropriate street venue to reach potential (and more) customers. Not only that, but the circuit is frankly horrible for GTP’s. Keep Detroit as a GTD only venue, where Corvette and Mustang can duke it out on the main stage so that GTP can come to Canada and keep the many fans happy here.

Thankfully we have fairly solid home-grown regional series like FEL Sportscar series, Super Production, Nissan Sentra Cup, the NASCAR Pinty’s Series and regular rounds of IMSA’s Porsche Carrera Cup Canada/North America to rely on that are pretty awesome to watch. However, the lack of international series is concerning.

Now, I cannot keep only praising Mosport, but as I mentioned, Montreal closes the streets of Ile de Notre Dame once a year for F1 and it’s support series. They cannot do it more than that one week. So what about the other tracks in Canada?

Realistically, the only ones that are viable are in Ontario, close to the USA border and the majority of American racing teams. The problem here is that the other tracks these series could go to are very far from where I live in the greater Toronto & Hamilton area. Calabogie is a seriously awesome track, but it’s a 4-5hr drive away from Toronto out near Ottawa and has a smaller pit lane than Mosport. Toronto Motorsports Park is too small a venue to host proper racing series, but is a mainstay for local time attack series (which are also really good).

Of course we had the Edmonton airport circuit that Indycar used for 8 years, but that was very surprising to have, even at the time, with dwindling attendances year over year when they were reported. The teams probably had to fly the cars in, because it would have been a crazy drive from Indianapolis to Edmonton (28hr drive!!)

As a side note: I am planning on going into detail about more of what’s going on around the GTHA in the near future, so that discussion will be continued then. So really Mosport is the only viable venue for non-F1 for American series to come to.

It’s unfortunate that most of the teams competing in these series are American, although not surprising. Even some Canadian teams are really based in the USA. Take for example Compass and Samantha Tan Racing in SRO. They are both Canadian teams but are based in US southwest. I understand that Canadian teams have more difficulty competing full-time in IMSA and GT World Challenge given the long distances from Canada to most of the racing calendars. That is, unless they also happen to be defacto factory teams such as Pfaff and Multimatic (although even then, their motorsport bases are stateside). Or for example, AWA in a factory-supported role from GM this season. However, this isn’t what’s preventing Canada from being taken seriously as a motorsports market.

This is a problem for Canada, because it’s well documented that smaller US-based teams who find it too expensive to go to Mosport (and thus skip) are fairly numerous. These teams are usually based in the Carolina’s and elsewhere in the bible belt. It’s only another 4-6hrs from Detroit or Watkins Glen to get to Mosport. It’s not like Portland or Road America in Wisconsin where the Bible Belt based teams have far more difficulty getting to. For teams like Penske or Ganassi, actually have less of a drive to get to Mosport (8.5hrs from Indianapolis) than, say Road Atlanta (9hrs from Indianapolis), if you count the border crossing, it’s still a similar duration.

Even if you have a team located in Charlotte NC, it takes less time to get to Mosport (12.5-13hrs from the centre of Charlotte) to Road America (14-15hrs). Clearly the distance isn’t that much of a hurdle.

So clearly we have (I think) debunked that as the main reason. I think the real reason is that the sponsors of these Pro-AM (emphasis on the AM) teams are often US, regional companies with little to no presence in Canada. The only benefit for them being in Canada is the TV air time beamed back to the US. If you compete in the SRO World Challenge series, this is even more apparent, given the lack of LIVE TV (web-streaming excluded).

Yes, the USA has a lot more companies and a lot more rich people who can afford to go racing at this level, so this makes sense. I mean, there are only so many children Lawrence Stroll can bankroll for racing, after all.

Clearly there can be things to remedy the “official” reason as to why IMSA is not bringing GTP to Canada next year. Just as Mosport lengthened and widened the pit lane for the NASCAR Truck series, the same could be done again for IMSA’s growing field. I believe there is room to do this at the end of pit lane, but it would require a bit of terraforming to get done, as the end of pit lane drops off quite a bit in elevation before joining the track. The infield section around turn 1 can’t really see much of the track because it’s in a bit of a bowl. Adding space for extra pit lanes would not change the visibility for spectators at all.

Alternatively, IMSA can tweak the schedule to swap GTP at a race that could be better served with having a GT only race, so as to free up a slot for GTP. I still contend that Detroit is a horrible spot for GTP cars, considering the lack of decent width for side by side racing, which may have been ok for Indycar, but the Michelin Pilot Cup Series race was less than spectacular (with one obvious exception), in my opinion. Hopefully they’ll see that and we can have the schedule change to have GTP return instead of an LMP2-headlined event in 2025. I also don’t see the need to have a second GTP/GTD-PRO + Indycar double header at a street circuit. Long Beach is basically IMSA’s and Indycar’s version of the Monaco Grand Prix, so that’s understandable. Detroit can be done without in my opinion.

So what to do in the meantime? Clearly things need to be done to make Canada more important that just “a stop on the calendar”. Special attention needs to be had to make the event special. There was the little event down at Yonge-Dundas Square a number of times that brought IMSA race cars to downtown Toronto. That was nice, but I think series can do better. I’m not suggesting anything in particular, but something that will bring attention to it more than most events.

If IMSA has too many races (especially Endurance Cup), then why not have the Fanatec World Challenge come back as an endurance event, 4-6hrs in duration?

Otherwise, there would have to be a completely new race track built somewhere to at least an FIA Grade 1 circuit to be able to host the World Endurance Championship if COTA becomes a problem.

However, this was attempted back in the mid 2010’s with Canadian Motor Speedway, which would have been located in Fort Erie, Ontario, close to Niagara Falls. Designed by Jeff Gordon, it was to be a oval track with an externally connected FIA grade 2 roadcourse. This met local political opposition and red tape after initial approvals, and was finally cancelled during COVID, after moving a creek to facilitate the oval construction.

There is a loyal fanbase here in Canada, and we deserve the best. Hopefully this gets rectified soon.

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