A vocal part of Road America’s growing IMSA fan base has asked for years for a sports car endurance race at the track. Now one is coming.
The 4-mile track outside Elkhart Lake will host a six-hour race in 2026, the biggest change for the schedule announced Thursday.
The Aug. 2 race will join the Rolex 24 at Daytona in February, Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March, Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen in June and Motul Petit Le Mans in October as part of the Michelin Endurance Cup. In a corresponding move, the race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in September will drop to 2 hours and 40 minutes.
“I spent a lot of time growing up at Road America,” IMSA President John Doonan said in a news conference in Sebring, Florida, where the series races this weekend. “My time there, my excitement and passion, the time I spent going through the beautiful forests up there, that’s a personal passion.
“From a business standpoint, we want to create excitement and newness for our fans, primarily for the race teams.
“What you’re seeing is newness and excitement for the audience, the fans, and tremendous flexibility with the promotor partners to say let’s shuffle it up a little bit.”
The crowd for IMSA at Road America has grown in recent years to the point it’s neck-and-neck with the IndyCar weekend, track president Mike Kertscher said last year.
“Our front straight is pretty much all lit now, so if the knock ever comes (for an endurance race), we’ll certainly open the door,” he said at the time.
The Road America 500 was a staple at the track in the SCCA, United States Road Racing Championship and IMSA Camel GT races from the late 1950s through the ’80s. Since then, Grand Am ran 500-mile races in 2000 and 2001, and there have been a handful of 4-hour races.
Extrapolating from recent years, a six-hour race at Road America could cover somewhere from 135-180 laps, or 540 to 720 miles.
Road America has expressed interest in a longer race for years. Discussions that led to the move for 2026 have been ongoing for upwards of two years, Doonan said.
Without also changing the length of the Indianapolis race, extending Road America would not have been possible due to teams’ budgets, Doonan said.
“If you had a 2:40 at Road America, you can’t plop in another 3 hours and 20 minutes,” Doonan said. “Hours on the engine, hours on the components, more tires, more fuel. It’s really careful consideration with all those factors.”
