Sports car racing
Sports car racing is a form of motorsport road racing that uses sports cars with two seats and enclosed wheels. The cars in question may be either purpose-built sports prototypes, which are the highest level in sports car racing; or grand tourers which, being based on road-going models, are considerably more common, but not as fast. Sports car races are, more often than not, endurance races run over particularly long distances or large amounts of time, resulting in an emphasis on reliability and efficiency of the car and its drivers over outright car performance or driver skills. The FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship are some of the best-known sports car racing series, and so is the GT World Challenge. Sports car racing is one of the main types of circuit auto racing, alongside open-wheel racing, touring car racing and stock car racing.
A hybrid of the purism of open-wheelers and the familiarity of touring car racing, sports car racing is commonly associated with the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. First run in 1923, Le Mans is one of the longest-running motor races. Well-known historic sports car races include the Italian classics, the Targa Florio and Mille Miglia, and the Mexican Carrera Panamericana. Most top-class sports car races focus more on endurance and strategy than pure speed or skills, and longer races usually involve complex pit strategies and regular driver changes. As a result, sports car racing is seen more as a team endeavour than an individual sport, with team managers such as John Wyer, Tom Walkinshaw, driver-turned-constructor Henri Pescarolo, Peter Sauber and Reinhold Joest becoming almost as famous as some of their drivers.
Success in sports car racing has helped build the prestige of various car manufacturers, such as Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley, BMW, Chevrolet, Ferrari, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Lancia, Lotus, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche. These makers' top road cars have often been similar in engineering and styling to those raced. This close association with the exotic nature of the cars distinguishes between sports car racing and touring cars.
The 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, and 24 Hours of Le Mans are considered the Triple Crown of endurance racing. Other crown-jewel sports car endurance races include Petit Le Mans, Nürburgring 24 Hours, Spa 24 Hours, Bathurst 12 Hour and Suzuka 1000km.
History
Evolution
According to historian Richard Hough, "It is obviously impossible to distinguish between the designers of sports cars and Grand Prix machines during the pre-1914 period. The late Georges Faroux contended that sports-car racing was not born until the first 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1923, and while as a joint-creator of that race he may have been prejudiced in his opinion, it is certainly true that sports-car racing as it was known after 1919 did not exist before the First World War."In the 1920s, the cars used in endurance racing and Grand Prix were still basically identical, with fenders and two seats, to carry a mechanic if necessary or permitted. Cars such as the Bugatti Type 35 were almost equally at home in Grands Prix and endurance events, but specialisation gradually started to differentiate the sports-racer from the Grand Prix car. The legendary Alfa Romeo Tipo A Monoposto started the evolution of the true single-seater in the early 1930s; the Grand Prix racer and its miniature voiturette offspring rapidly evolved into high performance single seaters optimised for relatively short races, by dropping fenders and the second seat. During the later 1930s, French constructors, unable to keep up with the progress of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union cars in GP racing, withdrew into primarily domestic competition with large-capacity sports cars – marques such as Delahaye, Talbot and the later Bugattis were locally prominent.
Similarly, through the 1920s and 1930s the road-going sports/GT car started to emerge as distinct from fast tourers and sports cars, whether descended from primarily road-going vehicles or developed from pure-bred racing cars came to dominate races such as Le Mans and the Mille Miglia.
In open-road endurance races across Europe such as the Mille Miglia, Tour de France and Targa Florio, which were often run on dusty roads, the need for fenders and a mechanic or navigator was still there. As mainly Italian cars and races defined the genre, the category came to be known as Gran Turismo, as long distances had to be travelled, rather than running around on short circuits only. Reliability and some basic comfort were necessary in order to endure the task.
Post-war revival
After the Second World War, sports car racing emerged as a distinct form of racing with its own classic races, and, from 1953, its own FIA sanctioned World Sportscar Championship. In the 1950s, sports car racing was regarded as almost as important as Grand Prix competition, with major marques like Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar and Aston Martin investing much effort in their works programmes and supplying cars to customers; sports racers lost their close relationship to road-going sports cars in the 1950s and the major races were contested by dedicated competition cars such as the Jaguar C and D types, the Mercedes 300SLR, Maserati 300S, Aston Martin DBR1 and assorted Ferraris including the first Testa Rossas. Top Grand Prix drivers also competed regularly in sports car racing. After major accidents at the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 1957 Mille Miglia the power of sports cars was curbed with a 3-litre engine capacity limit applied to them in the World Championship from 1958. From 1962 sports cars temporarily took a back seat to GT cars with the FIA replacing the World Championship for Sports Cars with the International Championship for GT Manufacturers.Growth at a national level
In national rather than international racing, sports car competition in the 1950s and early 1960s tended to reflect what was locally popular, with the cars that were successful locally often influencing each nation's approach to competing on the international stage.In the US, imported Italian, German and British cars battled local hybrids, with initially very distinct East and West Coast scenes; these gradually converged and a number of classic races and important teams emerged including Camoradi, Briggs Cunningham and so on. The US scene tended to feature small MG and Porsche cars in the smaller classes, and imported Jaguar, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Allard and Ferrari cars in the larger classes.
File:1971 McLaren M8E Laguna Seca.jpg|thumb|The McLaren M8E that was driven by Vic Elford in the 1971 Canadian-American Challenge Cup
A breed of powerful hybrids appeared in the 50s and 60s and raced on both sides of the Atlantic, featuring European chassis and large American engines – from the early Allard cars via hybrids such as Lotus 19s fitted with large engines through to the AC Cobra and De Tomaso Pantera. The combination of mostly British or Italian chassis and American V8 engines gave rise to the popular and spectacular Can-Am series in the 1960s and 1970s.
In Britain 2-litre sports cars were initially popular, subsequently 1100 cc sports racers became a very popular category for young drivers, with Lola, Lotus, Cooper and others being very competitive, although at the other end of the scale in the early to mid-1960s the national sports racing scene also attracted sophisticated GTs and later a crop of large-engined "big bangers" the technology of which largely gave rise to Can-Am but soon died out. Clubmans provided much entertainment at club-racing level from the 1960s into the 1990s and John Webb revived interest in big sports prototypes with Thundersports in the 1980s. There was even enough interest in Group C to sustain a C2 championship for a few years; at 'club' level Modified Sports Car and Production Sports Car races remained a feature of most British race meetings into the 1980s, evolving into a "Special GT" series that was essentially Formula Libre for sports or saloon cars. After a relative period of decline in the 1980s a British GT Championship emerged in the mid-90s.
Italy found itself with both grassroots racing with a plethora of Fiat based specials and small Alfa Romeos, and exotica such as Maserati and Ferrari – who also sold cars to domestic customers as well as racing on the world stage. Road races such as the Mille Miglia included everything from stock touring cars to World Championship contenders. The Mille Miglia was the largest sporting event in Italy until a fatal accident caused its demise in 1957. The Targa Florio on the island of Sicily, another tough road race, remained part of the world championship until the 1973 and remained as a local race for a few years afterwards.
As the French car industry switched from making large powerful cars to small utilitarian ones, French sports cars of the 1950s and early 1960s tended to be small-capacity and highly aerodynamic, aimed at winning the "Index of Performance" at Le Mans and Reims and triumphing in handicap races. Between the late 1960s and late 1970s, Matra and Renault made significant and successful efforts to win Le Mans overall, while also tackling Formula One. An event less known than the 24 Hours was the Tour de France Automobile, held in stages all across the country similar to the bicycle race. It even featured pure-bred Le Mans prototypes competing on public roads with two persons on board.
In Germany, domestic production based sports racing is since the 1950s largely dominated by Porsche, plus BMW and Mercedes-Benz, although sports car/GT racing gradually became eclipsed by touring cars and the initially sports car based Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft gradually evolved into the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft. Porsche started to evolve a line of sports prototypes from the 1953 1500cc flat-4 Porsche 550; noted for their toughness and reliability they started to win in races of attrition such as the Targa Florio and 12 Hours of Sebring. They grew slightly bigger to 2000cc flat-6 up to the 1967 Porsche 910, which still was an underdog compared to the 4 liter V12 Ferrari P and 7 liter V8 Ford GT40. From 1968, Porsche entered the biggest classes, with the 3 liter prototype Porsche 908 and finally the 5 liter sportscar Porsche 917, and the Stuttgart marque became first a competitor for overall wins and then came to dominate sports car racing – both they and Mercedes have made intermittent returns to the top level of the sport through the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2010s. The long Nordschleife of the Nürburgring, opened in 1927 and used for testing by German manufacturers ever since, is since the 2000s also visited by brands from other continents trying to top the List of Nürburgring lap times.
Sports car racing has intermittently been popular in Japan – in the 1960s small-capacity sports racers and even a local version of the Group 7 cars as raced in the Canadian-American Challenge Cup were popular; a healthy local sports prototype championship ran until the early 1990s and now the Super GT series provides high-budget exposure to manufacturers, with many international drivers appearing. The Japanese manufacturers have also been frequent visitors to the US sports car scene and to the European scene, in particular Le Mans, where despite many years of trying by all the main Japanese marques the only victory to have been scored by a Japanese marque was by Mazda in 1991, until 2018 when Toyota scored a first and second-place finish. Toyota followed this with another 1-2 finish in 2019.