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 style of racing is often associated Carc 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 Italian classics, the Targa Florio (1906–1977) and Mille Miglia (1927–1957), and the Mexican Carrera Panamericana. 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 Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Lotus, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, 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.
Read more about Sports Car Racing: Types of Cars, Notable Sports Car Racing Series
Famous quotes containing the words sports, car and/or racing:
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)