World Endurance Championship 2016 calendar adds Mexico City

The event in the Mexican capital, on the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit being remodelled for this year's Formula 1 grand prix, will take place at the start of September and will kick off a five-race leg of flyaway events.

The other races are the eight fixtures on this year's calendar, starting with Silverstone in April.

The Nurburgring race has been moved foward from the end of August to the end of July, which has reduced the post-Le Mans 24 Hours summer break from 11 weeks to five.

Pierre Fillon, president of WEC promoter the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, said: "We believe that the time is right to expand the WEC.

"The nine-race calendar for 2016 allows us to continue to build the tradition of six-hour events in the countries we visit, some of which were not so familiar with endurance racing when we began in 2012.

"We have worked with the teams and circuits to reduce the long summer gap following Le Mans, and this new calendar will keep the action going through the summer."

WEC boss Gerard Neveu added: "The opportunity offered by Mexico City to take endurance racing back to Latin America was the right one at the right time.

"In consultation with our partners and competitors, we believe that the countries in which we race have all fully embraced endurance racing and that was one of the considerations for any further rounds."

Neveu stated that the full freight costs of the additional race would be borne by the series promoter "so that there will not be any significant impact on their logistics budgets".

This follows consultation with the teams about a ninth race and a near unanimous rejection of the idea.

The pre-season WEC test, dubbed the prologue, will remain at Paul Ricard on March 25/26 after Monza was considered.

2016 WEC CALENDAR
April 17 Silverstone (GB)
May 7 Spa (B)
June 18/19 Le Mans 24 Hours (F)
July 24 Nurburgring (D)

September 4 Mexico City (MEX)

September 17 Austin (USA)
October 16 Fuji (J)
November 6 Shanghai (PRC)

November 19 Sakhir (BH)

DID YOU KNOW...

... Mexico City has hosted world championship sportscar rounds on three occasions? The World Sports-Prototype Championship visited Mexico in 1989-90 and then the renamed Sportscar World Championship took in a race in '91.