Sports car and endurance racing: several classes, one race, shared cars.

What sports car racing is

Wikipedia (secondary) describes sports car racing as a contest between two kinds of car on closed circuits: two-seat GT cars derived from production models, and prototypes built purely for racing. Races are often long, and two or more drivers take turns at the wheel of the same car. The same source calls the 24 Hours of Le Mans, first run in 1923, the oldest sports car race still held.

Le Mans was born as a reliability test. According to the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), which still organizes it, the idea came up at the 1922 Paris motor show among ACO secretary general Georges Durand, Rudge-Whitworth's Emile Coquille and engineer-journalist Charles Faroux. The ACO says Faroux wanted eight hours and Durand held out for 24. The ACO and The Race both note that the first cars had to carry road equipment such as headlights, a horn and a mirror. That first race started on 26 May 1923 in a hailstorm, with 33 cars from 20 makes, and the ACO says 30 of them finished. Our history section covers what came next.

The classes

In endurance racing several classes share the track at once, and each class has its own result and its own championship. The classes run at different speeds; RACER, for example, places IMSA's LMP2 prototypes between the faster GTP cars and the GT classes.

World Endurance Championship and Le Mans

RacingNews365 lists three classes for the 2026 Le Mans 24 Hours, and Wikipedia (secondary) gives the background for each:

• Hypercar, the top class since 2021, which alone competes for overall pole and victory. It admits prototypes built to either the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) or LMDh rules.
• LMP2, a second tier of prototypes.
• LMGT3, for production-based GT3 cars, which replaced the older GTE classes from 2024.

IMSA in North America

RACER's class guide describes four classes running together in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship:

• GTP, introduced in 2023: closed-cockpit hybrid prototypes built to rules aligned with the WEC Hypercar class, so the same cars can race in both series.
• LMP2: closed-cockpit prototypes from a small group of approved chassis builders, slower than GTP and faster than the GT cars. Wikipedia (secondary) adds that they use a spec Gibson V8 engine.
• GTD PRO, added in 2022, and GTD: both use FIA GT3 cars. GTD PRO is for professional drivers, while GTD is a pro-am class whose lineups must mix professionals with amateurs rated Bronze or Silver.

How a race is run

Qualifying

Qualifying is also done class by class. RacingNews365 describes the 2026 Le Mans format as a knockout: an opening session sends the top 15 Hypercars and the top 12 cars in each of LMP2 and LMGT3 to Hyperpole 1, and from there 10 Hypercars and 8 cars from each other class go on to fight for pole in Hyperpole 2.

Points

The WEC's official guide says longer races are worth more: six-hour races pay 25 points down to 1 for the top 10, eight-hour, ten-hour and 1812 km races pay 38 down to 2, and Le Mans pays 50 down to 2, with one point for the Hyperpole pole sitter in each class. In IMSA, points are awarded within each class at every event; Wikipedia's 2025 season summary and IMSA's own 2021 explainer both give 350 points for a class win and 35 for a class pole, and a separate Michelin Endurance Cup is scored at set intervals during the long races.

Pit lane and neutralisations

Pit stops and caution periods have their own rules in every series. The FIA WEC briefing notes for the 2026 Lone Star Le Mans give one example of how a series sets these rules: a 60 km/h pit lane speed limit, a pit lane split into working, blending and fast lanes, and an 80 km/h limit for every car under a Virtual Safety Car. These figures come from one event's notes; each series publishes its own. Our race weekend and flags pages explain the general ideas.

The main series

FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). The WEC says it was established in 2012 by the FIA and the ACO, which run it jointly. Le Mans is one of its rounds. The ACO's official race report says the No. 7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries won the 94th running in June 2026, completing 381 laps and finishing 10.913 seconds ahead of the No. 20 BMW. The ACO also reports an LMP2 one-two for Inter Europol Competition, led by its No. 43 Oreca, and Crash.net's results and the WEC give the LMGT3 win to the No. 33 TF Sport Corvette. In 2025, the ACO lists the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson as the winner after 387 laps.

The 2026 WEC season was still in progress as of October 2026. The WEC announced in July 2026 that its last two rounds would move to new six-hour races at Barcelona and Monza, and its report from Barcelona on 18 October 2026 says Toyota clinched the Hypercar manufacturers' title there. The WEC says the drivers' title is between the two Toyota crews and will be settled at the Monza finale. See endurance and Le Mans.

IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Speedsport says IMSA was founded in 1969 by John and Peggy Bishop with NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., and Wikipedia (secondary) describes it today as a NASCAR subsidiary based in Daytona Beach. Its season includes the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the Twelve Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans. The 2026 season is finished: IMSA and Porsche report that the No. 7 Porsche Penske 963 of Felipe Nasr, Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich won the 2026 Rolex 24 by 1.569 seconds, and NBC Sports reports that the No. 6 Porsche Penske car won the 2026 Petit Le Mans finale. Sportscar365's copy of IMSA's release lists Jack Aitken as 2026 GTP drivers' champion, with Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing and Cadillac taking the team and manufacturer titles. Full class results are on our IMSA page.

How people get into it

Some endurance classes are built around amateur drivers. IMSA's GTD class, as RACER describes it, requires lineups that mix professionals with amateurs rated Bronze or Silver, so an all-professional crew cannot enter it.

Below the headline championships sit support series. Wikipedia (secondary) lists, among others, the Michelin Pilot Challenge for GT4 and TCR cars, the VP Racing SportsCar Challenge for LMP3 and GT4 cars, and single-make series including the Mazda MX-5 Cup and the Mustang Challenge, all under IMSA sanction. IMSA's own 2026 Mustang Challenge schedule confirms that series is running, and Performance Racing Industry reports that IMSA expanded the VP Racing SportsCar Challenge to 10 events for 2026.

At club level, endurance racing is part of the amateur ladder. SCCA lists Enduro among its road racing levels, between Drivers' School and Regional Racing, and NASA's licence application includes a TREC licence for endurance racing alongside its competition licence. Either route needs a competition licence, which our licences and schools page explains. NASA's own path runs through its HPDE track day levels before competition school.