Truesports was founded by businessman Jim Trueman and was based in Hilliard, Ohio. The team's partnership with Bobby Rahal began in the early 1980s after Trueman and Rahal had competed together in Can-Am racing. Trueman had also supported driver Vern Schuppan at the 1981 Indianapolis 500, where Schuppan finished third, before formally launching the Truesports CART program in 1982.
In the early years of the team's CART campaign, March chassis paired with Cosworth DFX engines formed the core of the technical package. March was one of the dominant chassis suppliers in Indy car racing during this era, and the Truesports-March combination proved highly competitive in Rahal's hands.
Rahal scored his first CART win midway through the 1982 season at Cleveland, followed by another victory at Michigan. He placed second in the championship standings and won the CART Rookie of the Year award. Further wins followed in 1983 and 1984.
In 1985, Truesports secured Budweiser as primary sponsor. Rahal mounted a strong championship challenge, winning three races across a five-race span and finishing third in the final standings.
The 1986 season brought the team's defining achievement. Rahal and Truesports won the Indianapolis 500, with Trueman present to witness the victory despite his battle with cancer. Jim Trueman died just eleven days after the race. The team dedicated the remainder of the season to his memory, and Rahal went on to win six races and claim the 1986 CART championship.
For 1987, with Steve Horne and members of the Trueman family managing day-to-day operations, the team transitioned from March to the Lola chassis while retaining the Cosworth DFX engine. Several leading teams had switched to the Chevrolet-Ilmor powerplant, which was more powerful, but Truesports competed successfully enough for Rahal to win three races and secure his second consecutive CART title.
Beginning in 1990, Truesports embarked on an ambitious project to develop its own chassis, the Truesports All-American. Unlike the in-house programs at Penske and Galmer, which assembled their cars in England, Truesports built theirs entirely in the United States at their Hilliard, Ohio shops. The design team used a rolling road wind tunnel at the Aeronautical and Astronautical Research Laboratory at Ohio State University.
Don Halliday led the primary design work. Scott Pruett drove the Truesports 91C-Judd to a respectable debut in 1991 after returning from a serious testing injury in 1990. The chassis was further developed for 1992 with the more powerful Chevrolet Indy A engine, but Pruett was unable to win with it. Escalating costs and the departure of sponsor Budweiser forced the team to abandon the in-house chassis project midway through 1992.
Rahal had left Truesports at the end of 1988 after the team switched from Cosworth to the underpowered Judd engine. His replacement, Scott Pruett, won co-Rookie of the Year at the 1989 Indianapolis 500 but could not replicate the championship-level results of the March years.
After a difficult 1992 season, the Truesports organization restructured. The team's physical assets, headquarters, and chassis program were leased and ultimately absorbed by Rahal-Hogan Racing, co-owned by former Truesports driver Bobby Rahal. In 1993, the chassis was rebranded as the R/H, scored a second place at Long Beach, but proved uncompetitive on superspeedways and was abandoned by year's end.
Truesports won 19 points-paying Indy car races across its history and produced back-to-back CART champions with a single driver-chassis combination. The team's mid-1980s March-era results remain among the most successful runs in the history of independent American Indy car teams. Steve Horne, longtime crew chief at Truesports, later went on to found Tasman Motorsports in Australia.