ELMS returns to Silverstone in 2025

Silverstone will host a round of the European Le Mans Series next season as international endurance racing makes a return to the United Kingdom after an absence of six years.

The Silverstone 4 Hours on 14 September will be the penultimate round of the series for LMP2, LMP3 and LMGT3 machinery run by Le Mans 24 organiser the Automobile Club de l’Ouest.

It will be the first time the ELMS has visited the UK since 2019 when the series was part of a double-header weekend at Silverstone with the World Endurance Championship on 31 August/1 September.

Both series were due to return 12 months later before major calendar changes resulting from the COVID pandemic and have not visited the UK since.

The Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup also departed the UK after the 2019 season.

The series now known as the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup ran at Silverstone that year but fell off the schedule when the 2020 fixture was cancelled as the result of COVID.

The disappearance of the WEC, the ELMS and the GTWCE Endurance Cup from the UK has left the GTWCE Sprint Cup as the only international sportscar series to race in the UK after returning in 2021 after a COVID-enforced one-year hiatus.

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Silverstone returns to the ELMS having been part of the series and its forerunners almost continuously from its launch as the Le Mans Endurance Series in 2004 until ’19.

Only in 2006 and 2012 was it not on the calendar, years in which Donington Park took the UK round.

Silverstone replaces Mugello on the 2025 schedule in a move which means that all six rounds of the series will take place in a different country.

The rest of the schedule, which begins in Barcelona in April and concludes in Algarve in October, is unchanged.

ACO president Pierre Fillon said: “The ACO is extremely pleased to see the ELMS returning to the UK for the first time since 2019, giving the British fans a taste of Le Mans at home at Silverstone.

“Once again the European Le Mans Series calendar features a selection of circuits, each with a variety of challenges to test both the car and the driver.”