Endurance racing (motorsport) in the context of Ligier JS P217

Grand Prix motor racing, a form of motorsport competition, has its roots in organised automobile racing that began in France as early as 1894. It quickly evolved from simple road races from one town to the next, to endurance tests for car and driver. Innovation and the drive of competition soon saw speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), but because early races took place on open roads, accidents occurred frequently, resulting in deaths both of drivers and of spectators. A common abbreviation used for Grand Prix racing is "GP" or "GP racing".

The Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus, founded in Paris, on 20 June 1904, reorganised as Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), in 1947, headquartered in Paris. Each event of the Formula One World Championships is still called a Grand Prix; Formula One is also referred to as "Grand Prix racing". Some IndyCar championship races are also called "Grands Prix".

Sports car racing is a form of motorsport road racing that uses sports cars with two seats and enclosed wheels. The cars in question may be either purpose-built sports prototypes, which are the highest level in sports car racing; or grand tourers (GT cars) which, being based on road-going models, are considerably more common, but not as fast. Sports car races are often endurance races run over particularly long distances or large amounts of time (generally between 6 and 24 hours), resulting in an emphasis on reliability and efficiency of the car and its drivers over outright car performance or driver skills. The FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship are some of the best-known sports car racing series, and so is the GT World Challenge. Sports car racing is one of the main types of circuit auto racing, alongside open-wheel racing (such as Formula One and Indycar), touring car racing (such as BTCC and V8 Supercars, which is based on 'saloon cars' as opposed to the 'exotics' seen in sports cars) and stock car racing (such as NASCAR).

A hybrid of the purism of open-wheelers and the familiarity of touring car racing, sports car racing is commonly associated with the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. First run in 1923, Le Mans is one of the longest-running motor races. Well-known defunct sports car races include the Italian classics, the Targa Florio (1906–1977) and Mille Miglia (1927–1957), and the Mexican Carrera Panamericana (1950–1954). Most top-class sports car races focus more on endurance and strategy than pure speed or skills, and longer races usually involve complex pit strategies and regular driver changes. As a result, sports car racing is seen more as a team endeavour than an individual sport, with team managers such as John Wyer, Tom Walkinshaw, driver-turned-constructor Henri Pescarolo, Peter Sauber and Reinhold Joest becoming almost as famous as some of their drivers.

The Mille Miglia (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmille ˈmiʎʎa], Thousand Miles) was an open-road, motorsport endurance race established in 1927 by the young Counts Francesco Mazzotti and Aymo Maggi. It took place in Italy 24 times from 1927 to 1957 (13 times before World War II, and 11 times from 1947).

Like the older Targa Florio and later the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico, the MM made grand tourers like Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche famous. The race brought out an estimated 5 million spectators.

The Targa Florio was a public road endurance automobile race held in the mountains of Sicily near the island's capital of Palermo. Founded in 1906, it was the oldest sports car racing event, part of the World Sportscar Championship between 1955 and 1973. While the first races consisted of a whole tour of the island, the track length in the race's last decades was limited to the 72 km (45 mi) of the Circuito Piccolo delle Madonie, which was lapped 11 times.

After 1973, it was a national sports car event until it was discontinued in 1977 due to safety concerns. It has since been run as Targa Florio Rally, a rallying event, and is part of the Italian Rally Championship.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans (French: 24 Heures du Mans; French pronunciation: [vɛ̃t.katʁ‿œʁ dy mɑ̃]) is an endurance sports car race held annually near the city of Le Mans, France. It is widely considered to be one of the world's most prestigious races, and is one of the races – along with the Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 – that form the Triple Crown of Motorsport, and is also one of the races alongside the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring that make up the informal Triple Crown of endurance racing. Run since 1923, it is the oldest active endurance racing event in the world.

Unlike fixed-distance races whose winner is determined by minimum time, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is won by the car that covers the greatest distance in 24 hours. The cars on this track are able to achieve speeds of 366 km/h (227 mph), and reached 407 km/h (253 mph) on the Mulsanne Straight in 1988 – instigating the addition of more chicanes to the track to reduce speed reached. Racing teams must balance the demands of speed with the cars' ability to run for 24 hours without mechanical failure. The race is organized by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO). It is held on the Circuit de la Sarthe, composed of closed public roads and dedicated sections of a racing track.

The World Sportscar Championship was the world endurance racing series run for sports car racing, sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), from 1953 to 1992. The championship evolved from a small collection of the most important sportscar, endurance, and road racing events in Europe and North America with dozens of gentleman drivers at the grid to a professional racing series where the world's largest automakers spent millions of dollars per year.

The official name of the series frequently changed throughout the years but was generally known as the World Sportscar Championship from its inception in 1953. Alongside the Formula One World Championship, it was one of the two major World Championships in circuit motor racing. The championship was revived in the 2012 season under the new name as the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Jules Lucien André Bianchi (French pronunciation: [ʒyl bjɑ̃ki]; 3 August 1989 – 17 July 2015) was a French racing driver who competed in Formula One from 2013 to 2014.

Born and raised in Nice, Bianchi was the grandson of endurance racing driver Mauro Bianchi and the great-nephew of Formula One driver Lucien Bianchi. Graduating from karting to junior formulae in 2007, Bianchi won his first title at the 2007 French Formula Renault 2.0 Championship with SG Formula. After winning the 2008 Masters of Formula 3, Bianchi won the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2009 with ART. He then progressed to the GP2 Series, finishing third in both 2010 and 2011. Bianchi then finished runner-up to Robin Frijns in the 2012 Formula Renault 3.5 Series.

The FIA World Endurance Championship, abbreviated as WEC, is a world championship for automobile endurance racing organized by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The series supersedes the ACO's former Intercontinental Le Mans Cup which began in 2010 and is the revival of the World Sportscar Championship which ended after the 1992 season. The World Endurance Championship name was previously used by the FIA from 1981 to 1985.

The series features multiple classes of cars competing in endurance races, with sports prototypes competing in the Hypercar class (LMH or LMDh), and production-based grand tourers (GT cars) competing in the LM GT3 category. World champion titles are awarded to the top-scoring drivers and manufacturers over the season, while other cups and trophies will be awarded for drivers and private teams.

The 24 Hours of Daytona, also known as the Rolex 24 At Daytona for sponsorship reasons, is a 24-hour sports car endurance race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is run on the Sports Car Course layout, a 3.56-mile (5.73 km) combined road course that uses most of the tri-oval plus an infield road course. The race has about 60 different cars competing for victory across multiple classes. With multiple drivers “Each team trades shifts between three and five drivers”. The race is held on the last weekend of January or first weekend of February as part of Speedweeks, it is the first major automobile race of the year in North America. The race is sanctioned by IMSA and is the first race of the season for the IMSA SportsCar Championship.

The race has borne the names of several sponsors over the years. Since 1992, the Rolex Watch Company has been the title sponsor of the race, replacing Sunbank, which replaced Pepsi in 1984. Winning drivers of all classes receive a Rolex Daytona watch, a tradition that started back in 1964 for the Daytona Continental. The reason behind racers winning a watch is because back then “chronographs were really “tool watches” for those in the racing industry” used for time purposes.

The 12 Hours of Sebring is an annual motorsport endurance race for sports cars held at Sebring International Raceway, on the site of the former Hendricks Army Airfield World War II air base in Sebring, Florida, United States. In the past, this race has been a round of the now defunct World Sportscar Championship, IMSA GT Championship and American Le Mans Series. In 2012, the race was the opening event of the FIA World Endurance Championship in a one off race before being returned to the American Le Mans Series for 2013. Starting in 2014, the event became the second round of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

The race is considered to be one of the three legs of the informal Triple Crown of endurance racing along with the 24 Hours of Le Mans and 24 Hours of Daytona.