Sports car racing is a form of circuit
auto
racing with
automobiles
that have two seats and enclosed wheels. They may be purpose-built or related to
road-going
sports cars.
A kind of hybrid between the purism of
open-wheelers and the familiarity of
touring car racing, this racing is often associated with the annual
Le Mans 24 Hours endurance race. First run in 1923, it is one of the oldest
motor races still in existence. Other classic but now defunct sports car races
include the
Targa
Florio (1906 - 1977) and
Mille
Miglia (1927). Most top class sports car races emphasise endurance (races
are typically anywhere from 2.5 to 24 hours in length), reliability and strategy
over pure speed. Longer races usually involve complex pit strategy and regular
driver changes - sports car racing is seen more as a team sport than a
gladiatorial individual sport and team managers like
John Wyer,
Tom
Walkinshaw, driver-turned-constructor
Henri Pescarolo,
Peter
Sauber and
Reinhold Joest have become almost as famous as many of their drivers.
The prestige of
Ferrari,
BMW,
Porsche,
Lotus,
Maserati,
Alfa Romeo,
Mercedes-Benz,
Jaguar, and
Aston
Martin derives in part from success in sports car racing and the
World Sportscar Championship. Road cars sold by these manufacturers have in
many cases been very similar to the cars that were raced, both in engineering
and styling. It is this close association with the 'exotic' nature of the cars
that serves as a useful distinction between sports car racing and Touring Cars.
The
12 Hours of Sebring,
24 Hours of Daytona, and
24 Hours of Le Mans were once widely considered to be the
trifecta of
sports car racing; driver
Ken Miles
would have been the only driver to win all three in the same year, but an error
in the
team orders of the
Ford GT40
team at Le Mans in 1966
took the win from him, although he finished first.
