WEC and Formula E agree on no clashes in 2018
Bosses from Formula 1, the World Endurance Championship and Formula E have agreed to avoid major date clashes in future seasons.
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
F1 and the WEC have worked out a deal not to host races in the same country on the same weekend, while the WEC and FE have reaffirmed their agreement to avoid all date conflicts on account of the number of drivers who compete in both series.
The principle that there would be no F1 date on the weekend of the Le Mans 24 Hours was also reaffirmed.
The deals were thrashed out at a meeting of Formula 1 sporting chief Ross Brawn, WEC boss Gerard Neveu and FE founder Alejandro Agag over the course of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend last month.
Earlier this month Agag described the meeting as a "very good initiative from the FIA" but admitted "there is still one race we're trying to avoid a clash" over in 2018.
Neveu insisted that this year's clash between the Nurburgring WEC round and the New York Formula E fixture on July 15-16 would be one-off and that there would be no conflicts in 2018.
He told Motorsport.com: "Le Mans will be a protected weekend and we will not have F1 and the WEC at the same time in the same country, because that does not make sense.
"We are trying to do our best for everyone and I have the feeling that the three partners are working very constructively."
The provisional 2017/18 FE calendar published by the FIA earlier this week appears to bear out Neveu's claims.
The New York double-header has moved forward a week to July 7/8 and the WEC round at the Nurburgring would not be able to take place until the following weekend.
That is because Neveu has promised his teams that there will be no race within four weeks of Le Mans, which will take place on June 15/16 next season.
The 2018 WEC calendar isn't expected until later in the year.
Half of the FE rounds will clash with F1 races – Rome with Bahrain, Paris with Azerbaijan, a TBA event with Canada, New York with Britain and the Montreal season finale with Hungary.
Agag said: “We have no problem with F1, we have no drivers in both. [It is accepted] we will clash because there are so many [F1] races.”
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