Richard James
SRO America moves second event to NOLA
SRO Motorsports America has moved its second event for Fanatec GT World Challenge America, Pirelli GT4 America and Touring Car from the new Ozarks International Raceway to NOLA Motorsports Park on May 20-22, citing challenges related to infrastructure and supply chains. NOLA Motorsports Park is located in Avondale, Louisiana and is a new circuit for the series.
"Over the past two years we have been reminded that we cannot control all external forces,” said Greg Gill, president and CEO of SRO Motorsports America. “We thank our friends at the Ozarks International Raceway for their extraordinary efforts to prepare for our race weekend. Yesterday we concluded that we could not produce the desired quality event in the limited time available. We are appreciative of NOLA for being able to step in to maintain our schedule.”
Gill and other representatives of SRO America were present at last weekend’s running of the USAC Porsche Sprint Challenge at Ozarks International to observe. Drivers who had tested at Ozarks questioned the wisdom of running GT3 cars at the challenging circuit, and noted that not all infrastructure was in place at that time. Porsche Sprint Challenge did not run the GT3 Cup cars at the event, only the GT4 Caymans.
“When we look at any new circuit, and especially when drivers come back to us with their concerns, we pay all the more attention to it,” Gill said during the season opener at Sonoma Raceway a week-and-a-half ago. “And we will be going through and evaluating it again as we get ready for the next next race. It is not something that just happened and they showed up. This is a track that has a pending homologation coming as a Grade 3 facility. That is not just something that is arbitrarily done by the FIA, and (that's) our approach as well. We want to pick tracks that are certainly challenging for our customers, but ones that they will enjoy running at in a safe and sound way.”
The rest of the SRO Motorsports America schedule consists of tracks the series has visited in recent years and will remain the same.
Richard S. James
Richard James is motorsports journalist living in Orange County, Calif, who has been involved in the sport to some degree for three decades. He covers primarily sports car racing as a writer and photographer, with occasional forays into off-road and other forms of racing. A former editor of the SCCA’s publication, SportsCar, he has a special love for the grass-roots side of the sport and participates as a driver in amateur road racing.
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