📷 Neil Sheard

For sports car fans, April is where the fun really begins to ramp up. IMSA may have gotten the ball rolling early with Daytona and Sebring, but April is when the rest of the world wakes up and the 2018 calendars begin.

April will see 16 different series putting on a total of 31 different races. That’s a lot of different streaming pages. This is where we hope tRL TV will show its strengths. You don’t have to worry about finding the individual pages and streams – we’ve done the hard work, just come to us. If you’re too busy to watch a race live then that’s ok – we archive them for future viewing anyway.

In no particular order, here’s what to expect this coming month.

British GT

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  • April 2 – Oulton Park
  • April 28-29 – Rockingham

British GT opens at the traditional Oulton Park weekend. It is worth noting that the Oulton Park races take place on the Monday, rather than Easter Sunday. Qualifying retains the traditional Saturday slot.

The series returns at the end of the month at Rockingham, with another two races.

VLN

  • April 7 – VLN2
  • April 15 – Nurburgring 24 Qualifying Race

VLN returns to the Nurburgring (where else?) for VLN2. Expect the usual madness of 150+ cars around the full-length Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Although strictly speaking not a VLN event, the Nurburgring 24 Hour is closely linked to the VLN series. Sunday April 15th hosts a 6-hour qualifying race to decide the Nurburgring 24 Hour grid.

Blancpain GT

  • April 7 – Zolder (Sprint)
  • April 8 – Zolder (Sprint)
  • April 22 – Monza (Endurance)

Blancpain kicks off the series at Zolder in Belgium with the Sprint variant of the championship. A significant change for 2018 is that both races during a Sprint weekend are now points scoring (as opposed to the Qualifying and Main race format previously).

A couple of weeks later, the series heads to Monza for the first Endurance event of the year. The 3 hour event at Monza sees the first competition of the new Bentley Continental GT.

ADAC GT Masters

  • April 14 – Oschersleben
  • April 15 – Oschersleben
  • April 28 – Most
  • April 29 – Most

The German national GT series opens at Oschersleben and makes its series debut at Most later in the year. For a national GT series, many would be surprised at the big names involved in this series. Unfortunately, the congested GT schedule in 2018 means the ADAC GT Masters Oschersleben event clashes with the Nurburgring 24 Hour Qualifying Race.

GT4 Series (European and Central Europe)

  • April 7 – Zolder (European Series)
  • April 8 – Zolder (European Series)
  • April 28 – Most (Central Euro)
  • April 29 – Most (Central Euro)

GT4 is still gathering momentum, and SRO is capitalising on it by creating more GT4 based series. The GT4 European Series follows Blancpain GT Sprint around, so begins the calendar at Zolder.

GT4 Central European Cup is new for 2018 and sees its first ever race at Most. Whether or not SRO will provide streaming for the Central European Cup remains to be seen, but if they do then we’ll make sure it’s available to you. A third series, the Nordic Cup, is also new for 2018, however, will probably not be streamed live.

Super GT

  • April 8 – Okayama

A series which deserves more love than it gets. Relatively open development, a tyre war, multi-class racing and some mad creations. NISMO TV provides live coverage, with the excellent Sam Collins on comms. We expect this to return in 2018.

IMSA

  • April 14 – Long Beach

As always with IMSA, we cannot provide an embedded stream but we can point you in the right direction. When IMSA provide the race on YouTube, we’ll get it uploaded to our archive. The Long Beach event supports the IndyCar Series and is a shorter 100 minute sprint event.

Blancpain GT Asia

  • April 14 – Sepang
  • April 15 – Sepang

SRO succeeded where ACO has yet to – a big, healthy grid of cars in Asia. Blancpain GT Asia was so successful that it stole the majority of the Asian Le Mans Series GT class when it arrived on the scene. Blancpain GT Asia shouldn’t be ignored as just another series – it has some good quality teams and drivers, and some interesting tracks too.

ELMS & Le Mans Cup

  • April 14 – Paul Ricard (Le Mans Cup)
  • April 15 – Paul Ricard (ELMS)

The reshuffled ACO calendars mean that ELMS and Le Mans Cup now both host their opening races on the same weekend at Paul Ricard. The LMP2 cars are now balanced (supposedly), and teams have come and gone from the grid. 2018 should be an interesting year for the LMP2 class.

International GT Open

  • April 14 – Estoril
  • April 15 – Estoril

If you’re not sick of GT3 racing yet, International GT Open is at Estoril this month. The series never gets the attention that series like Blancpain gets, but it’s still worth a watch. GT Open is unfortunately quite erratic with its streaming. If we can’t get it live, then you’ll at least get a race replay in the archive.

24H Series

  • April 21-22 – Navarra 12 Hours

Creventic is back. Prototypes, GT3 cars and everything else you’ve come to expect from the amateur focused series.

Grass Roots Club Racing

  • April 6-7 – ChampCar Endurance Series – Daytona
  • April 6-8 – World Racing League – NCM 9+7
  • April 21 – Champ Car Endurance Series – Charlotte
  • April 21-22 – Champ Car Endurance Series – Road America
  • April 21-22 – World Racing League – MSR Houston 8+7

Champ Car Endurance Series (formerly Chump Car) and the World Racing League are making good strides in making amateur racing a spectator sport. Unfortunately, both series also tend to schedule races over each other, and being a hobby series, they often cannot stream every event. However, what they manage to stream, we’ll provide here too.

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Engineering student, lover of all things technical and lifelong motorsport fan. Employed in the Oil & Gas Industry, developing Major Emergency Management simulations. Owner of the best beard on the site.