FIA World Endurance Championship in the context of Privateer (motorsport)

Scuderia Ferrari (/fəˈrɑːri/; Italian: [skudeˈriːa ferˈraːri]), currently racing under Scuderia Ferrari HP, is the racing division of luxury Italian auto manufacturer Ferrari and the racing team that competes in Formula One racing. The team is also known by the nickname "the Prancing Horse" (Italian: il Cavallino Rampante or simply il Cavallino), in reference to their logo. It is the oldest surviving and most successful Formula One team, having competed in every World Championship since 1950.

The team was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, initially to race cars produced by Alfa Romeo. By 1947, Ferrari had begun building its own cars. Among its important achievements outside Formula One are winning the FIA World Endurance Championship, World Sportscar Championship, 24 Hours of Le Mans, 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, 24 Hours of Spa, Targa Florio, and Mille Miglia. Its customers have also secured victories at events including Petit Le Mans, Nürburgring 24 Hours, Bathurst 12 Hour, and Carrera Panamericana. The team is known for its passionate support base, known as the tifosi. The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is regarded as the team's home race.

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 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.

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.

Petit Le Mans (French for Little Le Mans) is a sports car endurance race held annually at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia, United States. The race has been held for a duration of 10 hours since 2014, having previously been held for either 1,000 miles (1,600 km) or 10 hours, whichever came first. In addition to the overall race, teams compete for class victories in different categories, divided into prototypes and grand tourers.

The race was founded by Road Atlanta owner Don Panoz to bring the rules and spirit of the 24 Hours of Le Mans to North America. The success of the inaugural event in 1998, held as part of the IMSA season with a special one-off format, led to the creation of the American Le Mans Series in 1999 with a similar formula. Petit Le Mans was a flagship event for the ALMS, which became the most prominent top-class sports car racing series during the 2000s. The 2010 and 2011 editions were also part of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, the precursor of the World Endurance Championship. Since 2014 the race has been one of the crown jewel events of the IMSA SportsCar Championship. Class winners of the event originally received an automatic invitation to the following year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, however this was removed in 2012.

The 2012 FIA World Endurance Championship was the inaugural running of the World Endurance Championship. It was co-organised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO). The series replaced the former Intercontinental Le Mans Cup held by the ACO from 2010 to 2011. The series was open to Le Mans Prototypes and grand tourer-based racing cars meeting four ACO categories. Several championships, cups, and trophies were awarded in the series' four categories following an eight race season, with a World Championship available to the top scoring drivers and LMP1 category manufacturer.

Following a partial-season match-up against newcomers Toyota, Audi won the Manufacturers' World Championship, while the company's driver line-up of André Lotterer of Germany, Benoît Tréluyer of France, and Marcel Fässler of Switzerland earned the Drivers' World Championship ahead of their teammates Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen. Toyota's Alexander Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre were third in the Drivers' Championship standings. Ferrari defending their two Intercontinental Le Mans Cup LMGTE manufacturers title with the Manufacturers' World Cup, outscoring Porsche and Corvette. In the four FIA Trophies for the four categories in the championship, Rebellion Racing won the LMP1 Privateers title, while Starworks Motorsport secured the LMP2 championship; AF Corse won the LMGTE Pro category for the second season in a row, as did Larbre Compétition in LMGTE Am.