Grand-Am was established in Daytona Beach, Florida, adjacent to the homes of NASCAR, International Speedway Corporation, and Daytona International Speedway. The organisation was created by members of the NASCAR community to fill the vacuum left by the failed United States Road Racing Championship in 1999, replacing it with a format centred on the 24 Hours of Daytona. In September 2008, NASCAR Holdings acquired the Grand American Road Racing Association outright, merging its communications, research, and marketing functions into the broader NASCAR structure while leaving Grand-Am in operational control of its own series.
The premier Rolex Sports Car Series launched in 2000 and combined sports racing prototypes and grand touring production cars at circuits across North America, Canada, and Mexico. In 2003 Grand-Am introduced the Daytona Prototype — a purpose-built class designed for cost control and competitive parity — which replaced the existing prototype categories and defined the series for the following decade. GT classes were progressively rationalised, settling into a single GT tier alongside the Daytona Prototypes. For the 2012 season Grand-Am debuted third-generation DP chassis with updated bodies and engines, including Corvette and Ford prototypes with more distinctive manufacturer styling.
The GT category accommodated a broad range of manufacturers including Audi, Chevrolet, Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, Ford, and Mazda, with rules permitting either tuned production cars or custom tube-frame chassis to suit different budget levels.
Originally a Canadian touring car series before Grand-Am acquired it, the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge — initially the Grand-Am Cup — ran as both a support series for Rolex Series events and as a standalone championship. It competed in two classes: Grand Sport (GS) for large-capacity GT-style cars, and Street Tuner (ST) for smaller sedans and coupes including front-wheel-drive vehicles. The series was broadly comparable in concept to the Trans Am Series and continued into the merged IMSA era.
Grand-Am served as the sanctioning body for the North American edition of the Ferrari Challenge one-make series. Starting with the F355, the series progressed through the 360 Modena and F430 before adopting the 458 Italia in 2010. All participants raced identical factory-tuned machinery.
Running alongside Ferrari Challenge events, the Shell Historic Challenge was an exhibition series for older Ferrari, Maserati, and Scuderia Ferrari-run Alfa Romeo models. The competitive element was secondary to the showcase of historic machinery.
Grand-Am sanctioned an online racing series through the iRacing simulation platform. Competitors drove digital versions of a Riley Daytona Prototype and the McLaren MP4-12C, mirroring the classes and format of the real-world Rolex Series.
Grand-Am initially sanctioned the North American arm of Formula Renault 2000, though the series later passed to the National Auto Sport Association. The Ford Racing Mustang Challenge, run from 2008 to 2010 using identical Ford Mustang FR500S cars co-developed with Larry H. Miller, was another short-lived Grand-Am series for amateur sprint competitors.
On 5 September 2012 Grand-Am announced that the Rolex Sports Car Series would merge with the Braselton, Georgia-based American Le Mans Series, which had been Grand-Am's primary domestic competitor since both series launched in 1999. Both organisations maintained their existing series through a final 2013 season before the combined Tudor United SportsCar Championship debuted in January 2014. The merger united the cost-controlled DP and GT philosophy of Grand-Am with the Le Mans-lineage prototype and GTE machinery of the ALMS, creating the most broadly inclusive sports car championship the United States had seen.