Petit Le Mans, the ALMS and the SCCA Built American Sports Car Racing

In 2015 a GT car won Petit Le Mans outright for the first time, beating the faster prototypes. The rain was the reason. Water from Hurricane Joaquin flooded the Road Atlanta track for the whole race, bringing a string of cautions and a red flag, and the GTLM cars leapfrogged the prototypes that could not find grip. Nick Tandy, the 2015 winner of Le Mans, and his co-driver Patrick Pilet crossed the line first once officials stopped the race, with just over two hours still to run.

That freak result sums up how American sports car racing works. It borrowed its ideas from Europe, mixed fast prototypes with road-based GT cars on the same track, and relied on three institutions to hold it together: the Sports Car Club of America, the American Le Mans Series and the endurance race that Don Panoz built at Road Atlanta.

SCCA history: how the Sports Car Club of America made road racing

The Sports Car Club of America was formed in 1944. It grew out of the Automobile Racing Club of America, which the brothers Miles and Sam Collier founded in 1933 and which dissolved in 1941 when the Second World War began. Former members regrouped, and in 1948 the new club started sanctioning road racing with the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix, helped by an enthusiast named Cameron Argetsinger.

The SCCA National Sports Car Championship followed in 1951, stitched together from events at Pebble Beach, Elkhart Lake, Watkins Glen and elsewhere. Many early races took place on disused air force bases, with the help of General Curtis LeMay, who lent out Strategic Air Command facilities. The SCCA relied on those venues in the early and mid-1950s as racing moved from the streets to permanent circuits.

By 1962 the club was managing the American rounds of the World Sportscar Championship at Daytona, Sebring, Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen, and it was involved in the Formula One United States Grand Prix. The same year it dropped its amateur-only policy and began to sanction professional racing. The United States Road Racing Championship came in 1963, then in 1966 the Can-Am series for Group 7 open sports cars and the Trans-Am Series for pony cars. A professional open-wheel series started in 1967 and ran under several names until the 1976 Formula 5000 Championship.

The architect of much of this was John Bishop, the SCCA's executive director, who helped to create the USRRC, Trans-Am and Can-Am. In 1969, after tension and infighting over the autonomy of professional racing, he resigned and helped to form the International Motor Sports Association, which would later become the body that runs the top American sports car championship.

What the SCCA runs today

The SCCA's work goes well beyond professional racing. It describes itself as a non-profit club supporting autocross, rallycross, track days, time trials, road racing, road rallies and hill climbs. The structure is six conferences, nine divisions and 115 regions, each running local events.

• Solo autocross: up to four cars at a time run a cone-marked course on a paved area such as a car park, and a national champion in each class is decided at the Nationals each September. The ProSolo variant pits two cars against each other on mirror-image courses with drag-race starts.
• Club Racing: licensed drivers race modified production cars and purpose-built formula and sports racers. Most are unpaid amateurs, though some move on to professional careers. The National Championship Runoffs have been held at Riverside, Daytona, Road Atlanta from 1970 to 1993, Mid-Ohio, Road America, Laguna Seca and Indianapolis. Jerry Hansen holds the record with twenty-seven national championships.
• Track Night in America: a low-barrier track programme held on weeknights, with about 150 events a year and nearly 10,000 entrants, and ten years old as of 2024.
• Professional series: Trans Am, the GT World Challenge America, the Global MX-5 Cup, and open-wheel championships in F1600, F2000 and Atlantic.

In 2015 a GT car won Petit Le Mans outright for the first time, and the rain was the reason.

Endurance racing and the Triple Crown

To understand Petit Le Mans it helps to know what endurance racing is for. It tests the durability of the equipment and the stamina of the people, with teams of several drivers sharing a car to cover a set distance or the most distance in a set time. Common lengths are around 500 km (about three hours) or 1,000 km (about six), and the longer classics last 12 or 24 hours.

The format has deep roots. The Targa Florio was founded in 1906, and Italy's Mille Miglia took place 24 times from 1927 to 1957. The first organised 24-hour automobile race ran on a one-mile oval at Driving Park in Columbus, Ohio, on 3 and 4 July 1905, where a Pope-Toledo covered 828.5 miles to win a $500 silver trophy, though two rival teams protested that the winner had arrived from the factory with a race-built engine. At Brooklands, the first 24-hour race at a dedicated venue was run eleven days after the track opened in 1907, and the complaints from local residents led to the Double Twelve format.

Three events form the Triple Crown of endurance racing: the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Petit Le Mans, the Nurburgring 24 Hours, the Spa 24 Hours and the Bathurst 12 Hour are the other major names. Petit Le Mans has also been considered one of the Big Six endurance races, along with the 24-hour events at Le Mans, Daytona, the Nurburgring and Spa, and the Sebring 12 Hours.

Petit Le Mans: Don Panoz's little Le Mans

The World Sportscar Championship ended in 1992, and sports car racing had no top-level world championship to its name. Le Mans remained, but mostly as a one-off for those who entered. IMSA tried a Professional SportsCar Racing series in place of its GTP class, and Europe produced two separate FIA series, a Sportscar Championship and a GT Championship.

Don Panoz, owner of the Road Atlanta circuit, worked with the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, the organisers of Le Mans, to create a new endurance race for 1998 that adopted the ACO's rules. The ACO lent the Le Mans name to Panoz and offered class winners an automatic invitation to the next year's 24 Hours. The new race would not run for a full day: it would last 10 hours or 1,000 miles (1,600 km), whichever arrived sooner. IMSA agreed to make it the finale of its season in a special one-off format. Because the two organisers ran slightly different formulas, seven classes were needed: LMP1, LMGT1 and LMGT2 for ACO cars, while IMSA's entries ran as WSC, GT1, GT2 and GT3.

The first race drew 31 entries, including the Porsche factory team that had just won at Le Mans. The overall fight was between the factory Porsche 911 GT1-98 and LMP1-98 cars, several Ferrari 333 SPs and the Panoz Esperante GTR-1s. Before the race ended, Panoz and the ACO agreed to set up the American Le Mans Series for 1999.

The Road Atlanta challenge

Road Atlanta is a 2.54-mile (4.09 km) permanent road course in Braselton, Georgia, with twelve turns and big changes in elevation. Some drivers describe it as a roller coaster, and the downhill Esses are one of its best-known sections. The race normally starts around noon on a Saturday in early October and ends at 10 p.m., with the last two hours in darkness. Teams use multiple drivers, usually three per car, and the multi-class traffic on a tight track with blind corners demands careful management. Rain is fairly common.

Because Petit Le Mans traditionally ends the season, titles are often decided there. Some teams take more risks to win the race, while others play safe to secure a championship. Rinaldo Capello has the most wins with five, in 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Rain shortened both the 2009 and 2015 editions.

Technology has been part of the story from the start. The Panoz Q9 GTR-1 Hybrid that raced in 1998 was the first hybrid to start, finish and win a class in a race. The Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid and the DeltaWing made their North American debuts at the 2010 and 2012 races.

The American Le Mans Series: ALMS history

Don Panoz, a businessman based in Braselton, created the American Le Mans Series, which held its first season in 1999 and had its headquarters next to Road Atlanta. Panoz was an investor in the Professional SportsCar Racing series that hosted the first Petit Le Mans, and for 1999 it became the ALMS and adopted the ACO's rulebook. Teams could win automatic entries to the Le Mans 24 Hours, and from 2003 the series champions were invited as well. Class winners at Petit Le Mans originally earned an automatic invitation to the following year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, an arrangement removed in 2012.

The first season had eight races, from the 12 Hours of Sebring to Las Vegas Motor Speedway. By 2000 there were 12, including two in Europe and one in Australia. The series moved away from the rovals at Charlotte, Las Vegas and Texas, and in later years raced on street courses alongside the Indy Racing League, in St. Petersburg and Long Beach. Laguna Seca, Mosport, Road Atlanta and Sebring were on the calendar every year, and from 2011 the series ran a street circuit in Baltimore.

Classes and a green push

The rules followed Le Mans. Purpose-built prototypes ran in the P1, P2 and PC classes, with modified production sports cars in GT and GTC. Factory teams were usually in P1 and privateers in P2, and cars carried two or three drivers depending on race length. The GT1 category was dropped after 2009, and the Le Mans prefix disappeared from the prototype class names in 2012. The two Challenge classes, built around the Oreca FLM09 prototype and the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, were meant to make it easier for privateers and newcomers to enter.

The series was the first in North America to be recognised by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and SAE International as a Green Racing Series. The 2008 Petit Le Mans hosted its first Green Challenge, and two leading cars ran low-CO2 engines that season: a Corvette C6.R with a 7.0 litre V8 on E85 cellulosic ethanol, and an Audi R10 TDI with a 5.5 litre turbodiesel V12. In 2010 Tequila Patron became the series' first presenting sponsor, for three seasons.

On 5 September 2012 the ALMS announced a full merger with Grand-Am Road Racing for 2014, under the IMSA banner. The result was the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, now the IMSA SportsCar Championship.

The IMSA SportsCar Championship today

The IMSA championship opens with the 24 Hours of Daytona, traditionally the last weekend of January or the first of February, and includes the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans. It is regarded as the successor of the IMSA GT Championship, the ALMS and the Rolex Sports Car Series. Petit Le Mans has been one of its crown jewel events since 2014, alongside Daytona and Sebring.

American sports car racing at a glance

Where American sports car racing stands now

Petit Le Mans remains a 10-hour season finale in early October at Road Atlanta, the IMSA season opens at Daytona, and the SCCA continues to run its range of events from Solo autocross to the Runoffs.