Grand Am Series History

The Grand American Road Racing Association was formed in 1999 in Daytona Beach, Florida, in the same venue as the Daytona International Speedway and the Nascar head offices. At the time of its formation, road racing was going through touch and uncertain times, thanks to uncontrolled technology and the cost that comes with it. Grand Am came and stepped in with sensible and affordable rules, giving the league a chance to still be competition driven but grounded by common sense and a level playing field.

The two main race series under the Grand- Am banner are the Rolex Series and the Continental Tire Series (formerly Koni Challenge).

Rolex started in 1999, making this previous season their 10th. It started to replace the United States Road Racing Championship. The entire series is centered around the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, the main endurance race of the series. When it started there were five classes but over the years it has simplified to just the Daytona Prototypes (named for the main race and are custom built just for the series) and the Grand Touring cars (tuned production cars or custom tube framed chassises). Because of the low cost and easy use of the Grand Am cars the number of competitors remains high in both series, and the Grand Am governing body has kept competition equalized. The two classes generally share the track for races, except for on shorter tracks where the average 50 cars just aren`t feasible at which point they break the two classes, the GT`s running on Saturday and the DP`s on the Sunday, the two races being the same length.

The current champions in DP are Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty (for the GAINSCO team) and in GT Leh Keen (Dempsey Racing`s newest drivers) and Dirk Werner (for the Farnbarcher-Loles team).

The Continental Tire Series (just acquiring the new name before the upcoming 2010 series) started in Canada as the Canadian Motorola Cup, until being taken over by Grand Am in 2001. It is also made of two different classes: Grand Sport (6 cylinder or 8 cylinder rear-wheel drive cars) and Street Tuner (smaller 4 or 6 cylinder compact sedans, coupes or roadsters) . They generally race the same weekend and on the same track as the Rolex series, although they host some of their own events as well.

Grand Am attracts some of the top drivers in the world of road racing and races on premiere track around North America. In 2008, the series was bought out by Nascar holdings in an attempt to merge communications, research and marketing while allowing both series to continue to control their own races.

The 2010 season officially kicks off with the running of the 24 Hours at Daytona on January 30th and 31st at the Daytona International Speedway.