The 1985 season introduced a significant structural change to the championship: Teams titles replaced the traditional Manufacturers awards across the outright, Group C2, and GT categories. This shift meant that teams — rather than constructors defined by an engine/chassis combination — now competed for the championship, fundamentally altering how smaller operations and privateers related to the standings. Separate Drivers titles for the outright category and the Group C2 class were also awarded.
The ten-race calendar was among the more compact of the era, and rounds 2, 8, and 10 were designated as non-points events for the Teams Championship, counting only toward the Drivers titles. This created strategic asymmetry across the season.
For the Drivers Championship, points were awarded to the top ten placed cars in the order of 20-15-12-10-8-6-4-3-2-1. Drivers of Group C2 cars received an additional two bonus points for any finish within the outright top ten. Points were not awarded if a driver transferred between cars during a race, failed to complete at least 30 percent of a car's total race distance, or drove a car that did not complete 90 percent of the winner's distance. At Round 9, only half points were awarded because the race was stopped with less than 50 percent of the scheduled distance completed.
For the Teams Championship, only the highest-finishing car from any given team scored at each round, with additional cars from the same team merely skipped in the points allocation. The same completion requirements that applied to drivers also applied to teams.
Hans-Joachim Stuck and Derek Bell shared a single Porsche 962C throughout the season and finished joint winners of the outright Drivers Championship — a co-drivers title that reflected the endurance racing tradition of a single car shared by two drivers across a season. The Rothmans Porsche team's consistency over the ten-round calendar gave them a clear advantage over rival Group C1 teams.
Gordon Spice and Ray Bellm took the Group C2 Drivers Championship in a Tiga Ford entered by Spice Engineering, which demonstrated the competitiveness of the smaller-displacement prototype class in this era.
The replacement of Manufacturers titles by Teams titles in 1985 was a meaningful evolution in how the FIA structured the World Sportscar Championship. By rewarding teams rather than car builders, the regulations acknowledged that the championship's competitive core was increasingly defined by professional racing operations rather than purely by the automotive brands supplying their hardware. This shift aligned the championship more closely with the team-centric model common in other top-level series and gave private entrants a more direct stake in the championship standings.