Courage began competitive driving in 1972, spending the following decade in hillclimb events. By 1980 he had accumulated more than 80 hillclimb victories, including the Mont-Dore. In 1977 he broadened his ambitions by entering sports car racing and made his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. His breakthrough came in 1981 when, co-driving a Lola-BMW, he completed the race and took class victory in the under 2-litre sports category. That result persuaded him that building his own prototype was the next logical step.
Courage Compétition was established in 1982 alongside Jean-Philippe Grand, based near the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France. The first chassis, the Courage C01, debuted at the 1982 24 Hours of Le Mans in the new Group C class powered by a Ford Cosworth DFL V8. The car retired after 78 laps, and further efforts with the C01 and its successor the C02 through 1983 and 1984 failed to yield a finish. During this period the team received sponsorship from Primagaz, and the chassis were briefly marketed under the Cougar name.
A deal with Porsche for the 1985 season transformed the team's competitiveness. The new Cougar C12 chassis was tailored around Porsche's turbocharged flat-six engine and immediately produced results: a 20th-place finish in 1985 was followed by 18th in 1986. The programme peaked in 1987 when the team finished third overall at Le Mans, behind only the factory Porsche 962 and a sister 962 entry. That same year Courage campaigned a partial season in the World Sportscar Championship with the Cougar C20 and Porsche 962, finishing eighth in the teams championship.
Following the 1987 high point, Yves Courage retired from driving to concentrate on running the factory. The team endured a difficult 1988 season but recovered strongly in 1989, winning the C2 class at Le Mans with a 14th-place overall finish. A 7th place overall in 1990 and class victories through the early 1990s kept the team competitive despite rule changes that periodically shuffled their classification. In 1992 the Courage C28LM took class victory and finished 6th overall, driven partly by Porsche factory driver Henri Pescarolo, who would go on to form a lasting association with Courage.
The team's closest approach to overall victory at Le Mans came in 1995, when drivers Bob Wollek, Eric Helary, and Mario Andretti led the race in the Courage C34 before finishing second overall, losing by a single lap to a McLaren F1 GTR. In 1996, two Courage entries finished 7th and 13th overall but placed 2nd and 3rd in the LMP class; one of those cars was run by Pescarolo Sport, which was developing as an independent operation closely tied to Courage's chassis supply.
By 1998 the long-standing Porsche partnership had run its course, with the ageing engine design unable to match newer machinery. Courage's final Porsche-powered efforts finished 15th and 16th that year. Pescarolo kept an older Courage-Porsche alive into 1999, achieving an unlikely 9th place.
For 1998 and 1999, Courage partnered with Nissan to develop an open-cockpit prototype using the Nissan VRH35Z 3.5-litre turbocharged V8. The 1999 Courage-Nissan finished 6th overall at Le Mans, while a Nissan-purchased C52 chassis finished 8th. When Nissan withdrew from sports car racing after 1999, Courage switched to Judd V10 power and debuted the C60 for 2000, which became the team's signature chassis of the modern era.
Pescarolo Sport adopted the C60 from 2001, progressively modifying their examples to the point that by 2004 the cars were re-designated Pescarolo C60s. Courage's own factory entries with the C60 reached their best result of 7th overall at Le Mans in 2003. A smaller LMP2 chassis, the C65, debuted in 2003 and became the most commercially successful Courage product: ten examples were built, making it the largest manufacturer in LMP2 at the time, and the type won the LMP2 teams championship in the Le Mans Endurance Series in 2004.
In 2006 the team ran two LC70 LMP1 cars with Mugen V8 engines under sponsorship from Yokohama and Mugen Motorsports, but persistent reliability problems prevented an outright victory despite the car's competitiveness. On 14 September 2007, Oreca announced its acquisition of Courage Compétition. Yves Courage remained with the company under Oreca ownership.
In 2010 Courage refounded independently as Courage Technology, with the declared aim of developing electric racing cars, though the project did not result in a front-line racing programme.
Courage Compétition occupies a distinctive place in Le Mans history as one of the most persistent and successful French privateer constructors of the prototype era. From the Group C years of the 1980s through to the structured LMP classifications of the 2000s, Courage chassis competed continuously at Le Mans for more than two decades and supplied customer teams across Europe and North America. The team's 1987 third-place overall, its 1995 near-win, and the widespread success of the C65 in LMP2 mark the high points of a sustained engineering effort that shaped the competitive landscape of sportscar racing throughout the era.