Rolex Sports Car Series Article Index for
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Information About

Rolex Sports Car Series




  Country/region North America
  Inaugural 2000
  LMP Classes Daytona Prototype (DP)
  GT Classes Grand Touring (GT)
  Races 15 (2007)
  Champion Driver DP: Jörg Bergmeister <br>GT: Andy Lally, Marc Bunting
  Champion Team DP:
  Manufacturer DP:
  Website http://wwwgrand-amcom


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 a 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 Prototype s, named after their premiere event, the Rolex 24 At Daytona .


HISTORY

Following the failure of the 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 .

2003 would see the series go through a radical change, as Daytona Prototype s 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.
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 then combined events, since GT cars would likely finish several laps behind the winning prototype and thus not cover the full distance.


SERIES CHAMPIONS



SEE ALSO



EXTERNAL LINKS