Grand-Am Road Racing

Grand-Am Road Racing or Grand-Am was an auto racing sanctioning body that was established in 1999 to organize road racing competitions in North America. Its primary focus was the Rolex Sports Car Series, an endurance racing championship series. It sanctioned five auto racing series. The series announced in September 2012 that it would be merging with the American Le Mans Series, which had been Grand-Am's main US competitor since its inception. The two series fully merged in 2014 under the banner of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, with the International Motor Sports Association.

The Grand American Road Racing Association was established in 1999 and was located in Daytona Beach, Florida, near the homes of NASCAR, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), and Daytona International Speedway. Although originated by some members of the NASCAR community, Grand-Am centers on different styles of racing including sports car racing and touring car racing on road racing circuits throughout North America.

On September 4, 2008, NASCAR Holdings announced their buyout of the Grand American Road Racing Association in an attempt to merge communications, research, and marketing resources into a single entity, while allowing each organization to continue to control their own racing series.

On September 5, 2012, the series announced that they would be merging with the Braselton, Georgia-based American Le Mans Series. Both series stayed current in 2013 and began a combined series in 2014.

The premiere series of Grand-Am was the Rolex Sports Car Series which originated in 2000 as a successor to the defunct United States Road Racing Championship. Combining classes of Sports Racing Prototypes and Grand Touring-style production-based cars, the series was centered on the Rolex 24 At Daytona but included a wide variety of American, Canadian, and Mexican tracks.

In 2003, the series replaced its Sports Racing Prototypes with new Daytona Prototypes, a custom-built class built specifically for the Rolex Series. These cost-effective race cars offer a relatively economical racing environment in which technology is carefully controlled to ensure close racing and approximate parity between different chassis and engines. For the 2012 season, the Rolex series rolled out Gen-III prototypes with new bodies, engines and chassis. These new chassis were designed to keep costs low while also creating body shapes with more brand characteristics. The new chassis were headlined by Corvette and new Ford prototypes.

The GT classes were also simplified over the years, allowing for a variety of American, European, and Japanese manufacturers to participate including Audi, Chevrolet, Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, Ford and Mazda. Rules allowed tuned production cars or custom tube frame chassis to be used, letting participants save cost if necessary.

In 2013 the GX class were introduced running with alternative fuel and new technology that was not already in use in GT cars. The contending manufacturers were Mazda, Porsche, and Lotus.