Following the failure of the United States Road Racing Championship in 1999, the new Grand American Road Racing Association announced a series modelled on endurance racing traditions centred on the 24 Hours of Daytona. The organisation was established in Daytona Beach, Florida, in proximity to NASCAR and the France family's International Speedway Corporation, reflecting the NASCAR community's backing of the new venture. The inaugural season in 2000 ran two classes of sports racing prototypes and multiple grand touring categories, with the series deliberately designed as a lower-technology and lower-cost environment compared to the ALMS.
The most consequential change in the series' history came in 2003 with the debut of the Daytona Prototype, a purpose-built chassis class replacing the existing sports racing prototype categories. Daytona Prototypes were engineered with close attention to cost control — technology was carefully regulated to keep parity between different manufacturers' chassis and engines accessible to smaller teams. By 2003 virtually the entire prototype field had converted to the new class, with the older SRPs phased out by year's end.
Grand Touring classes were progressively simplified in parallel. A faster GTS tier was eliminated after 2004 because its cars were matching or exceeding prototype lap times, leaving a single GT class alongside the Daytona Prototypes. This two-class model — DP and GT — became the defining structure of the Rolex Series for the remainder of its existence.
The Rolex Series attracted large entry lists, frequently putting more than 50 cars on circuit per race. At shorter tracks where such a field was impractical, the DP and GT categories were occasionally split into separate Saturday and Sunday races of equal length. When combined, a wave start was employed: Daytona Prototypes received the green flag first, followed 20 to 30 seconds later by the GT cars, reducing the hazard of the two performance tiers mingling at race start.
The series staged the North American Endurance Championship across three of its premier rounds: the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the Six Hours of Watkins Glen, and a race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Because Grand-Am's roots lay in the NASCAR community, Sprint Cup Series drivers regularly appeared in Rolex Series events, particularly at Daytona. The accessibility of the Daytona Prototype class — designed to be straightforward and reliable — made it an attractive entry point for NASCAR drivers with limited experience of road course racing.
The series moved through several tyre supply arrangements over its life. Michelin, Dunlop, Goodyear, and others competed for fitments in the early 2000s; a period of consolidation left Dunlop and Goodyear as the only suppliers through 2004. Hoosier Racing Tire then held the exclusive supply contract from 2005 to 2007, followed by Pirelli from 2008 to 2010. Continental became the final official tyre partner and supplied the series through its merger in 2014.
On 5 September 2012, Grand-Am announced that the Rolex Sports Car Series would merge with the rival American Le Mans Series to form a unified championship under the IMSA banner, debuting in 2014 as the Tudor United SportsCar Championship. Both series ran their final independent seasons concurrently in 2013. The last Rolex Sports Car Series race was held on 28 September 2013 at Lime Rock Park, closing fourteen seasons of competition.
The Rolex Sports Car Series demonstrated that cost-controlled prototype racing with strong manufacturer participation and high grid counts was viable in North America. Its Daytona Prototype concept directly shaped the class structure of the merged series, with the DP class continuing into the unified championship through 2018 before being replaced by the Daytona Prototype International (DPi) regulations. The 24 Hours of Daytona — the race the series was built around — remains the most important event on the American sports car calendar.