Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge

Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge
Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge
Category Grand touring
Country or region  United States
 Canada
Inaugural season 2004
Last Drivers' champion United States Charles Espenlaub
United States Charles Putman
Official website grand-am.com
Motorsport current event.svg Current season
Competitors in the KONI Challenge on a pre-grid at New Jersey Motorsports Park in 2008

The Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge is a racing series run by the Grand American Road Racing Association. Originating from the Canadian Motorola Cup, the series was taken over by Grand-Am in 2001 to become the Grand-Am Cup following the demise of rival IMSA's Firehawk series of similar rules in the US. KONI became series sponsor for the start of the 2007 season when the series became known as the KONI Challenge Series, before renaming once more prior to the start of the 2009 season as the KONI Sports Car Challenge. The series name was once again changed for the 2010 season.

The Continental Challenge is the support series for Grand-Am's premier offering, the Rolex Sports Car Series.

Contents

Races

In traditional sports car racing format, the races are often run with both GS and ST classes on track simultaneously, which is known as a "combined" race. Occasionally, races will be run in "split classes", with separate races for both classes. Current races are 2 hours 30 minutes with a required driver change.

Telecasts

  • Speed Channel currently broadcasts the series exclusively. However, Speed will only cover races that occur on the same weekend as a Rolex Series race. Most races are also streamed live on SPEED2.com

Vehicles

The series uses two classes in each race:

  • The Grand Sport (GS) class features large-displacement 6-cylinder or 8-cylinder sports cars as well as small displacement 4-cylinder forced induction sports cars.
  • The Street Tuner (ST) class is for smaller 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder compact sedans, coupes, or roadsters.

All vehicles have fewer modifications than most series, using a "showroom stock" format.[1]

The format is reminiscent of the original Trans Am Series, combining conventional sports cars and touring cars, though the Trans Am Series usually had a single driver per car, unlike the Koni series, which has two drivers per car. Some vehicles in the Continental Challenge have actually been painted to resemble the original Trans Am cars, such as the Boss 302 Mustangs of George Follmer and Parnelli Jones or the original Sunoco Camaro.

Champions

Season GS Champion Car ST Champion Car
2004 United States Craig Stanton
United States Terry Borcheller		 Cadillac CTS-V United States David Haskell
Canada Sylvain Tremblay		 Mazda RX-8
2005 Canada David Empringham
Canada Scott Maxwell		 Ford Mustang United States David Haskell
Canada Sylvain Tremblay		 Mazda RX-8
2006 Sweden Anders Hainer
United States Spencer Pumpelly		 BMW M3 United States Don Salama
United States Will Turner		 BMW 3 Series
2007 United States Jeff Segal
United States Jep Thornton		 BMW M3 United States Trevor Hopwood
Canada Adam Burrows		 BMW 3 Series
2008 United States Joe Foster
Canada Scott Maxwell		 Ford Mustang Canada Jamie Holtom Chevrolet Cobalt
2009 Canada Kenny Wilden Ford Mustang United States Christian Miller Honda Civic Si
2010 United States Charles Espenlaub
United States Charles Putman		 BMW M3 United States David Thilenius1
United States Lawson Aschenbach1		 Honda Civic Si

1The Bimmerworld 328i of Bill Heumann and Seth Thomas and the Compass360 Civic of Thilenius and Aschenbach finished the 2010 season tied in ST points. As both teams had the same amount of wins and second place finishes, Thilenius and Aschenbach won the title by virtue of having more third place finishes.

References

  1. ^ http://www.grand-am.com/assets/KONIRules.pdf

External links

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