The date change of the Fuji round of the FIA World Endurance Championship has left many drivers and fans disappointed as the new date will clash with IMSA's Petit Le Mans as well as Super GT's Autopolis round. While the new date will allow Fernando Alonso to compete the full season at the wheel of Toyota's LMP1 car, the date change creates a clash for many drivers who have a dual campaign in the WEC and IMSA or Super GT.
For sure it will be a boost for the WEC's attention to have a driver like Fernando Alonso contending for a world championship in another series besides F1. But after originally choosing the Fuji date exactly to avoid the clash with Petit Le Mans, the FIA and the ACO have betrayed the sportscar community with this date change, catering only to one star driver's needs.
Sportscar racing is a niche sport within all of motorsports and it is divided between multiple organizations. To help to grow the sport, the organizations need to co-operate in scheduling (as well as other things). Many drivers and even some teams compete in multiple series. I'm sure the WEC fans have happily seen drivers like Mike Conway in IMSA's endurance races and André Lotterer in at the wheel of GT cars at Spa and Nürburgring. Interestingly, Alonso's teammate Conway is one of the drivers affected by the date change since he's an additional endurance driver for Action Express Racing in IMSA.
As the WEC is changing to a winter schedule, it shouldn't be too difficult to create schedules with IMSA to avoid conflicting dates. Super Formula and Formula E already avoid clashes with the WEC. The two leading sportscar championships, the FIA WEC and IMSA's WeatherTech Championship, should do that for each other's schedules to enable drivers' dual campaigns. If the WEC tries to avoid conflicting dates with F1, it becomes more difficult as F1's schedule is only likely to grow and the FIA only requires it to avoid a clash with the 24 Hours of Le Mans. And anyway, an active F1 driver competing full-time also in the WEC will still likely remain very unusual despite Alonso's 2018-19 campaign.
It's not only the WEC to blame. Fortunately it hasn't been the case in last two years but there have been cases of an IMSA race in the same weekend with the Total 24 Hours of Spa, with drivers missing that weekend's IMSA race. The Spa and Nürburgring 24-hour races are the biggest GT races in the world where major manufacturers want to field the best drivers from their payroll. Blancpain GT Series had originally scheduled their Silverstone round in the same weekend with this year's Nürburgring 24 Hours, yet it did the right thing and changed the Silverstone date to allow drivers as well as teams to race at Nürburgring.
Having accepted Fuji's date change, the FIA and the ACO seem very ignorant towards sportscar drivers and other series, abandoning the original plan of avoiding a Petit Le Mans clash. The WEC organizers have obviously asked IMSA to change the Petit Le Mans date now to not clash with the WEC at Fuji, though IMSA should really not let fans down with a date chance at this point. Some fans had already booked a trip to Japan for the WEC, only to see the date changed now. IMSA must not do the same for the fans going to attend Petit.
