The third round of the GT World Challenge Europe season went down at Monza this weekend and there's a decent chance that if you're reading this article you've already seen the absolute calamities that went down multiple times at Turn 1.
Twice we saw massive pile-ups at Variante del Rettifilo, first on the opening lap and then again with just under five minutes remaining on the clock that ended the day, leaving the Silver Cup Audi-entry of Tresor Attempto Racing to claim the unlikely overall victory ahead of the Pro Cup entry No. 48 Mann-Filter of Lucas Auer, Luca Stoltz and Maro Engel.
The jokes wrote themselves across any social media platform you could find with fans remarking that the grid were doing their best impressions of your average simracing lobby, be it ACC, iRacing or Gran Turismo 7. And for good reason - the accidents were abjectly preposterous as McLaren's, Porsche's and just about every other brand of GT3 car went flying across the screen and absolutely demolished multiple other cars, causing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in total damages and ruined the races of countless teams, either by ending their day after barely 10 seconds of racing or by eliminating their chances at class wins, podium finishes, and valuable points hauls.
For those of you that actually haven't seen those two wrecks, check 'em out below:
Fifty-seven cars (57!!!) were on the grid for yesterday's race, meaning 57 cars spread across four different classes all went barreling into Turn 1 hoping to come out the other side alive. And to be fair, most of them did in the grand scheme of things.
The first incident was much harder to judge in terms of exactly what the hell happened with the genesis of the event revolving around the No. 17 GetSpeed Mercedes, the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari and the No. 7 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin. The second disaster, meanwhile, was triggered by Kelvin van der Linde slamming into the back of the No. 9 Pure Rxcing Porsche, sending Alexey Nesov forward as an out-of-control cannonball that collected multiple other cars in the ensuing carnage.
For his irresponsible actions, van der Linde was assessed a 155-second time penalty and the No. 32 Team WRT BMW dropped from P7 in the final standings to P30 overall.
Removing the COVID year of 2020, GT World Challenge Europe has raced at Monza every year since 2014. And every year since 2014, we've seen accidents like these - maybe not to the level of mayhem that yesterday produced - but major accidents all the same. The Temple of Speed is a legendary circuit in motorsport history and has been a mainstay for the series as well as other series across other motorsport mediums for decades.
However, following what we witnessed in the 2026 rendition of things, the question now begs to be asked: has the premier GT series on the planet finally outgrown its place at the storied circuit?
There's a guilty pleasure — a flirtation with disaster — that comes with all forms of motorsport. Just about every race track on Earth is designed to have its green-flag start begin with a high-speed sprint down a straight before plunging into a sharp corner or chicane.
What's that saying again? - 'You can't win the race on lap 1 but you can certainly lose it'?
When you have smaller cars, smaller grids, and fewer opportunities for catastrophe heading into the first turn, things become far more manageable while also maintaining the high-risk, high-adrenaline nature of simply trying to survive the opening lap. Yet in this modern age of the game, specifically looking at the combination of GTWCE and Monza, perhaps barreling 50+ GT3 cars into a near dead-stop hard breaking zone is no longer worth it.
Because even when you have some of the best drivers on the planet — and yes, regardless of how yesterday played out, these are still some of the finest GT racing talents anywhere in the world — there's simply too much chaos, too many cars, and not enough room to accommodate a grid of this size on a track configured the way Monza currently is.
The 2027 calendar has yet to be released, giving us time to speculate and SRO time to consider if they should replace three hours at Monza for three hours somewhere else. There is a seemingly easy and potentially very popular alternative available: a return to Silverstone, where GTWCE last raced in 2019 as part of its endurance schedule.
Other circuits that have been used previously ran as endurance rounds include Hockenheimring, Imola, Jeddah and Silverstone. With the Nürburgring GP layout already being in the rotation as an endurance race, Hockenheimring could be redundant. The same argument could be made for Imola if the series were to move away from having two Italian venues seeing as how Misano World Circuit has hosted a sprint round every year since 2012 and will do so again on the weekend of July 17-19.
Ideally, Jeddah doesn't come anywhere near this conversation, leaving a return to Silverstone as an option that should absolutely be considered for 2027.
What do you think? Does SRO and GTWCE have to consider a schedule swap to remove Monza from future calendars?
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