Following the demise of the World Sportscar Championship in 1992, sports car racing was left without a major worldwide series. The 24 Hours of Le Mans continued but largely on a standalone basis. Various leagues had emerged without major success, including IMSA's Professional SportsCar Racing series and, in Europe, the FIA Sportscar Championship and the FIA GT Championship.
Don Panoz, owner of Road Atlanta, collaborated with the organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans — the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) — to create a new sports car endurance race at the circuit for 1998. The event would adopt the ACO's rules. In addition to lending the Le Mans name, the ACO offered class winners automatic invitations to the following year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. The race format mirrored the 12 Hours of Sebring in that it did not run a full 24 hours; instead it would be 10 hours or 1,000 miles, whichever came first. IMSA agreed to allow the race to serve as the season finale with a special one-off format featuring competitors from both Le Mans and IMSA.
Because IMSA and Le Mans ran slightly different car formulas, organizers created seven classes: LMP1, LMGT1, and LMGT2 for ACO-compliant cars, and WSC, GT1, GT2, and GT3 for IMSA competitors. The inaugural 1998 event attracted 31 entries, including that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning Porsche factory team. Before the race had finished, an agreement was made for Panoz to establish the American Le Mans Series in 1999 with ACO support, replacing the IMSA GT Championship. The success of the inaugural event led directly to the creation of the ALMS with a similar formula.
Notably, Panoz's participation in the 1998 race with the Q9 GTR-1 Hybrid marked the first time in motorsport history that hybrid technology had been used to record a race start, finish, and class win.
Petit Le Mans served as a flagship event for the American Le Mans Series, 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. Class winners originally received automatic invitations to the following year's 24 Hours of Le Mans; this was removed in 2012.
Since 2014, Petit Le Mans has been one of the crown jewel events of the IMSA SportsCar Championship. The race is one of the Endurance Cup rounds and has traditionally served as the season-ending round, with championship titles frequently decided during the event. The race usually starts at around 12 p.m. local time on Saturday and ends at 10 p.m., with the final two hours taking place at night.
Road Atlanta is a 2.54-mile (4.09 km) permanent road course located in Braselton, Georgia. The circuit features twelve turns and includes significant elevation changes and high-speed sections, described by some as a "roller coaster." Notable areas include the downhill "Esses" and the final corner leading onto the main straight. The relatively short and tight nature of the track, combined with a number of blind corners, requires drivers to manage traffic carefully. Typically held in early October, weather is a variable factor with rain being fairly common.
The 2009 and 2015 races were shortened due to heavy rains making the track impassable. The 2015 race featured the first time a GT car won overall against the faster prototypes. Rain from Hurricane Joaquin created a flooded track throughout, causing multiple cautions and a red flag that allowed GTLM cars to leapfrog the prototypes struggling for grip. Nick Tandy, winner of the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans, and co-driver Patrick Pilet took the checkered flag when officials called the race with a little over two hours remaining.
Other experimental vehicles that have participated include the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid, which made its North American debut in the 2010 race, and the DeltaWing, which made its North American debut in the 2012 race.
Rinaldo Capello holds the record for most race wins, having won in 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007, and 2008.
The race is considered one of the most important endurance races in the world and one of the largest such events in North America, alongside the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. It has been regarded as one of the "Big Six" endurance motor races worldwide, alongside 24-hour races at Le Mans, Daytona, Nürburgring, and Spa, as well as the Sebring 12 Hours. The race attracts manufacturer-backed professional teams and internationally recognized drivers, with several 24 Hours of Le Mans, Indianapolis 500, and Formula One winners having competed at the event.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
Gallery · 4 related images
