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Sportscar racing is a form of motorsport road racing which utilises sports cars that have two seats and enclosed wheels. They may be either purpose-built sports prototypes which are the highest level in sports car racing or grand tourers (GT cars) based on road-going models and therefore, in general, not as fast as sports prototypes. Sports car racing is one of the main types of circuit auto racing, alongside open-wheel racing (such as Formula One), touring car racing (such as the British Touring Car Championship, which is based on 'saloon cars' as opposed to the 'exotics' seen in sports cars) and stock car racing (such as NASCAR). Sports car races are often, though not always, endurance races that are run over particularly long distances or large amounts of time, resulting in a larger emphasis on the reliability and efficiency of the car and its drivers as opposed to outright car performance or driver skills. The FIA World Endurance Championship is an example of one of the best known sports car racing series.

The prestige of storied marques such as Porsche, Audi,[2] Chevrolet, Ferrari, Jaguar, Bentley, Aston Martin, Lotus, Maserati, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW is built in part upon success in sports car racing. These makers' top road cars have often been very similar both in engineering and styling to those raced. This close association with the 'exotic' nature of the cars serves as a useful distinction between sports car racing and touring cars.[3]

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."[1]

Similarly, through the 1920s and 1930s the road-going sports/GT car started to emerge as distinct from fast tourers (Le Mans had originally been a race for touring cars) 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 (particularly in the 1950s),[4] 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.

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.[5]

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.

In Britain 2-litre sports cars were initially popular (the Bristol engine being readily available and cheap), subsequently 1100 cc sports racers became a very popular category for young drivers (effectively supplanting 500 cc F3), 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 ("ModSports") and Production Sports Car ("ProdSports") 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.

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 (often based on Panhard or Renault components), 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 at Le Mans.

A peculiarly American form of sports car racing was the Can-Am series, in which virtually unlimited sports prototypes competed in relatively short races. This series ran from 1966 to 1974 and was an expansion of the USRRC that conformed to FIA Group 7 rules. The original Can-Am fell victim to rising costs and the energy crisis.

The FIA attempted to make Group C into a virtual "two seater Grand Prix" format in the early 1990s, with engine rules in common with F1, short race distances, and a schedule dovetailing with that of the F1 rounds. This drove up costs and drove away entrants and crowds, and by 1993 prototype racing was dead in Europe, with the Peugeot, Jaguar, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz teams all having withdrawn.

Since the demise of Group C (where Japan and Germany both had successful series of their own) Japan has largely gone its own way in sports car racing; the Super GT series is for very highly modified production-based cars; although prototypes are slowly returning to Japanese racing in the Japan Le Mans Challenge many of these 'prototypes' are little more than rebodied Formula 3 cars (although there has been a long Japanese tradition of such hybrids; a Grand Champion series ran for many years with rebodied Formula 2 and Formula 3000 cars, rather similar to the second incarnation of Can-Am).

In the US, however, road racing actually saw a decline. The IMSA GT Championship had been prototype-based since 1983, with less emphasis on production cars. NASCAR was becoming increasingly dominant, and the IndyCar Series' split from CART in 1996 put more emphasis on ovals regarding domestic open-wheel racing. Also contributing to the decline was the retirement of Mario Andretti from Formula One. It would be over a decade before another American driver would join Formula One, viz. Scott Speed, although Speed was ultimately unsuccessful and eventually joined NASCAR himself.

The IMSA GT Series evolved into the American Le Mans Series; the European races eventually became the closely related Le Mans Series, both of which mix prototypes and GTs; the FIA remains more interested in its own GT and GT3 championships, with the ACO's rules the basis for the LMS and ALMS. The Le Mans Prototype is somewhat reminiscent of the old Can Am prototype.

Further splits in the American scene saw the Grand American Road Racing Association form a separate series, the Rolex Sports Car Series, with its own GT and prototype rules aimed at providing cheaper, lower-cost racing for independent teams. Grand Am's Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, a support series for the Rolex Series, provides a similar series to the old Trans Am Series, mixing conventional sports cars and touring cars. Due to Grand Am's affiliation with NASCAR, many NASCAR drivers occasionally participate in the Rolex Sports Car Series. Max Papis is a notable example in that he was a road racer prior to his tenure in the Sprint Cup Series. Many of these drivers only participate in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

The original Trans-Am Series dissolved in 2006, but returned to action in 2009 with tube frame TA1 and TA2 divisions racing with production-based TA3-American and TA3-International divisions. In addition, the SCCA continues to provide a major support series for Trans-Am. This series, known as the SCCA World Challenge, consists of a one-hour race for each round, combining three classes: GT (Chevrolet Corvette, Aston Martin DB9, etc.), "GTS" (Acura TSX, BMW 3 Series, etc.; replaced the former touring car class), and Touring Car (a "showroom stock" class similar to Grand Am's Continental Challenge). The Trans Am series returned in 2009, but has yet to establish a television contract.

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