Rolex Sports Car Series

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Rolex Sports Car Series
2008 Rolex Sports Car Series season
Category	Sports car racing
Country or region	North America
Inaugural season	2000
Prototype Classes	Daytona Prototype (DP)
GT Classes	Grand Touring (GT)
Current Drivers' champion/s	DP: Jon Fogarty, Alex Gurney GT: Dirk Werner
Current Teams' champion	DP: GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing GT: Farnbacher Loles Motorsports
Current Makes' champion	DP: Pontiac/Riley GT: Porsche
Official website	http://www.grand-am.com

The Rolex Sports Car Series is the premiere series run by the Grand American Road Racing Association. It is a North American-based sports car series that was founded in 2000 under the name Grand American Road Racing Championship to replace the failed United States Road Racing Championship. Rolex took over as series sponsor in 2002.

It has run with a mixture of classes of Sports Racing Prototypes and Grand Touring-style cars over the years. In 2003, the series debuted their custom prototype chassis, known as Daytona Prototypes, named after their premiere event, the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

1 History
2 Series champions
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

Following the failure of the United States Road Racing Championship in 1999, the new Grand American Road Racing Association announced their intentions to adopt a format similar to the one used in the USRRC, centering around the 24 Hours of Daytona. This series was seen as an alternative to the former IMSA GT Championship, which had since been replaced by the American Le Mans Series in 1999. The new series would run two classes of Sports Racing Prototypes identical to the rules used in the new FIA Sportscar Championship in Europe, while Grand Touring-style cars would consist of three classes: GTO for larger production-based race cars, GTU for smaller production-based race cars, and AGT for American tube frame cars. GTO and GTU would be renamed GTS and GT for 2001 to better match the classes used by the similar American Le Mans Series.

Action at the 2005 Grand-Am Road & Track 250 at Laguna Seca

2003 would see the series go through a radical change, as Daytona Prototypes debuted for the first time to replace both of the Sports Racing Prototype classes. Although SRPs would be allow to continue until the end of 2003, few were seen while the Daytona Prototypes took over the series. The American GT class was also dissolved with the cars being placed into the similar GTS class.

In 2004, the faster GTS class was abandoned in order to provide a larger gap between the Daytona Prototypes and GT cars. This meant that the GT class was now the top tier, being joined by the Super Grand Sport (SGS) class moved up from the Grand Am Cup series. This was further streamlined in 2005 with all Grand Touring-style cars being in a single GT class. The Rolex Sports Car Series currently uses these two classes today: DP and GT.

A 2007 Riley MkXI Daytona Prototype seen as the 2007 Rolex 24 At Daytona.

This formula has led to the Rolex Sports Car Series have a large number of competitors at most events, mostly due to the ease of use and low cost of the cars in either class while the Grand American Road Racing Association has been able to keep the competition equalized.

With such high car counts, Grand-Am has had to split GT and DP races at shorter tracks where it is not feasible to put 50 cars on the track at one instance. In each case, the GT cars race on Saturday, and the DP cars race on Sunday. This split format allows drivers to run both races. Each race is the same distance, as it would be if the two classes were running together. This does however make GT races slightly longer than combined events, since GT cars would likely finish several laps behind the winning prototype and thus not cover the full distance.

When the GT and DP races are combined, the two classes use a motorcycle racing-style "wave start," a concept from Roger Edmonson, who had been in motorcycle racing before organising the Grand American series with the France family. In this case, the DP cars will take the green flag first, followed, usually 20-30 seconds later (depending on track length) the GT cars. By starting the cars separately, the organisers hope for safer starts by having the two classes of cars race separately.

[edit] Series champions

Year	SR	SRII	GTO	GTU	AGT
2000	James Weaver	Larry Oberto	Terry Borcheller	Mike Fitzgerald	Doug Mills
	SRP	SRPII	GTS	GT	AGT
2001	James Weaver	Andy Lally	Chris Bingham	Darren Law	Craig Conway
	SRP	SRPII	GTS	GT	AGT
2002	Didier Theys	Terry Borcheller	Chris Bingham	Bill Auberlen Cort Wagner	Kerry Hitt
	DP	SRPII	GTS	GT
2003	Terry Borcheller	Steve Marshall	Tommy Riggins Dave Machavern	Cort Wagner Brent Martini
	DP	GT	SGS
2004	Max Papis Scott Pruett	Andy Lally Marc Bunting	Bill Auberlen Boris Said
	DP	GT
2005	Max Angelelli Wayne Taylor	Craig Stanton
	DP	GT
2006	Jörg Bergmeister	Andy Lally Marc Bunting
	DP	GT
2007	Alex Gurney Jon Fogarty	Dirk Werner