Why doesn't the WEC race at Silverstone anymore?

The 8-event run

Silverstone hosted the 6 Hours of Silverstone every WEC season from 2012 to 2019. The race was typically held in mid-April as the championship's European-spring opener, with the venue's Northamptonshire location and Grand-Prix-grade infrastructure offering operational reliability the WEC's earlier-season slots required.

The winners' list across the eight runnings: Audi won 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 with the R18 in various forms. Porsche took the 2016 and 2017 races with the 919 Hybrid. Toyota won the 2018 race with the TS050 Hybrid, then took the 2019 race on the road before the post-race disqualification handed the win to Rebellion's R13.

The Toyota 2019 race-day result would have been the 8th and final WEC Silverstone win for Toyota. Instead it produced the result that has defined Silverstone's WEC reputation since.

The 2019 disqualification

The 2019 6 Hours of Silverstone was the first round of the 2019-2020 super-season, run on 1 September 2019. The two TS050 Hybrids finished 1-2 on the road, with the No. 7 of Kobayashi/Conway/Lopez ahead of the No. 8 of Buemi/Nakajima/Hartley.

The post-race technical inspection found that both cars had excessive plank wear on the underside of the floor. The plank is a regulated wear surface designed to enforce a minimum ride height; cars that ride too low across the kerbs of a circuit wear the plank below the regulatory minimum. Silverstone's high-speed corners, particularly the Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel complex and the Stowe turn-in, are punishing on plank wear for any car running an aggressive aero setup.

Both Toyotas were measured below the regulatory plank thickness minimum. The FIA stewards disqualified both cars, awarding the win to the No. 1 Rebellion R13 of Bruno Senna, Gustavo Menezes and Norman Nato, which had finished one lap down on the road. The No. 3 sister Rebellion was promoted to second.

The aftermath

Toyota appealed the disqualification on the grounds that the plank-wear measurement was a function of circuit characteristics rather than team error. The appeal was unsuccessful. Both cars were stripped of points, although Toyota retained its constructor's points elsewhere in the season.

The result was a major story in motorsport press for weeks. The Toyota team principal at the time made a public statement that Silverstone's track surface had become "fundamentally incompatible" with the LMP1-Hybrid floor regulations. The British Racing Drivers' Club (which owns Silverstone) responded that no other team had reported a plank-wear issue, and that the Toyotas had been at the regulatory edge of multiple parameters.

The dropping from the calendar

The 2020 WEC calendar, published in late 2019, did not include Silverstone. The official reason was given as "calendar restructuring" rather than the 2019 race result. The 2021 and 2022 calendars also excluded the British round, with Monza becoming the WEC's European mid-season fixture instead.

The actual reason was a combination of three factors. First, the contractual relationship between the WEC promoter and Silverstone had been year-by-year rather than multi-year, and the 2019 result soured the relationship enough that renewal stalled. Second, the calendar shift toward Middle East rounds (with Bahrain and Qatar joining as fixed fixtures) reduced the European-round slots from 5 to 4. Third, the post-2019 calendar shifts driven by Covid disruption permanently redistributed the spring slots, with Spa and a rotating Italian round (Monza then Imola) absorbing the budget.

What the circuit does now

Silverstone remains the British F1 venue, hosting the British Grand Prix every July, and runs a substantial calendar of other championships (the World Endurance Cup European Le Mans Series round, the British Touring Car Championship, the Formula 2 and Formula 3 European rounds at the F1 weekend). The 6 Hours of Silverstone has not run since 2019 in any FIA-sanctioned form.

A WEC return has been discussed publicly twice. In 2022 the championship's then-Sporting Director suggested Silverstone was "on the shortlist" for a 2023 calendar reset, but that calendar moved Monza into the British slot and added Sao Paulo to the calendar instead. In 2024 a Silverstone return was floated as part of the 2025 calendar negotiations but was not finalised in time for publication.

What it tells us about the calendar

Silverstone's exit reflects two structural WEC trends. The first is the Middle East commercial pivot, which has put Bahrain and Qatar at the centre of the championship's autumn calendar and reduced available European slots. The second is the championship's preference for venues with multi-year commercial commitments over year-by-year contracts, which has prioritised Spa, Monza, Imola and Le Mans over rotational European slots.

A return is technically possible if the WEC negotiates a multi-year package with Silverstone's commercial team. The earliest plausible return is the 2027 calendar, which is in negotiation as of mid-2025. The British market is one of the WEC's larger media-rights segments, which keeps Silverstone in the conversation; the actual 2019 result, however, is rarely cited inside the WEC's promoter offices as a reason for the absence.