IMSA

Founded: 1969

Headquarters: Daytona Beach, Florida

President: John Doonan

Chairman: Jim France

CEO: Ed Benett

Vice Presidents: Simon Hodgson (Competition), David Pettit (Marketing)

More About The Racing Sanctioning Body

John Bishop and SCCA

John Bishop, a Sikorsky employee, first became involved in motorsport in the 1950s when he met Dave Allen, a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) staff member. Allen offered Bishop a management position on the SCCA Contest Board, which Bishop quickly accepted. Bishop moved to Westport, Connecticut shortly thereafter. Bishop's duties consisted of defining technical rules and general administration of SCCA competition, as well as providing artwork for many of the club's magazines and event programmes. He became well known in the motorsport scene and enjoyed a good relationship with the organization's president and Kimberly-Clark heir, James H. Kimberly.

In 1958, things changed for Bishop as the SCCA experienced internal changes. A new executive director position was created, to which each regional executive reported. This position was taken by Hugo Rush, who later became instrumental in Allen's departure. Although Bishop's relationship with Rush was not good, Bishop gained a vast amount of experience and began to show his qualities as a manager.

Rush would later depart due to his disagreement with the club as it moved to promote professional motor sports. Bishop took his place as executive director and was now responsible for both amateur and professional programs. To ensure a more serious level of competition, he was tasked with rewriting the technical rules for the newly formed Pro Racing program.

The SCCA had now taken the big step up to professional racing. By 1962, the SCCA was tasked with managing major World Championship for Makes rounds, particularly at Daytona, Sebring, Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen. The club was also involved in the US Grand Prix. Bishop helped to create the USRRC (United States Road Racing Championship) series for Group 7 sports cars to recover races that had been taken by rival United States Automobile Club (USAC). Bishop was also instrumental in founding the SCCA Trans-Am series and the SCCA/CASC Can-Am series.

In 1969, the tension and in-fighting caused Bishop to resign.

Bill France Sr. was instrumental in the creation of the International Motor Sports Association. France founded NASCAR as a professional oval track series and wanted to do the same for road racing. After discussions with Bishop, IMSA was born and Bishop was given the sole control of the organization (like NASCAR, there was no board of directors). France financed the majority of the organization and owned 75% of the stock; Bishop owned the remaining 25%. The articles of incorporation were filed in Connecticut on June 23, 1969.

The first race to be organized by IMSA was a Formula Vee and Formula Ford event at Pocono Raceway in October 1969. The SCCA threatened the circuit management and asked them to block IMSA from racing there. The event was held, although IMSA had to pay an additional $10,000 in rental fees. The race had an attendance of 328 spectators.

The organization soldiered on despite the small crowds, and another ten races were planned. Bill France, suffering from financial setbacks, brought on new investors to take over part of his stake in the series.

At the end of the 1970 season, Bishop helped to establish the foundations of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) "J appendix" for World Championship for Makes sports cars. For the end of the 1970 season, he advertised a new championship for Group 2 and Group 4 cars with equity between competitors.

The 1971 Grand Touring (GT) season introduced international endurance racing to North America. In 1972, Camel Cigarettes became the new sponsor of the GT series and the sedan series became known as the B.F. Goodrich Radial Challenge. In 1973, the 12 Hours of Sebring joined the IMSA GT Championship's schedule. Later that year, the organization gained recognition from the ACCUS and the FIA. IMSA was scheduled to sanction the 1974 24 Hours of Daytona, but the race was cancelled because of the oil crisis.

Bishop did not believe that factory teams would stick with the new series, so he tried to ensure that the rules were not biased in their favor. He was in favor of looking after privateer teams and helping them to become competitive. As European cars began to dominate, a new series was formed in 1975 called All American Grand Touring (AAGT) to give equal latitude to foreign cars. Turbocharged cars were permitted in 1977.

In the same year, Bishop invited a pair of Jean Rondeau-built Inaltera's to compete as "special prototypes". They became the foundation of the newly formed Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) category in 1981, with separate rules similar to Group C (Bishop was unhappy with the fuel consumption formula of the latter).

In 1984, Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), the organizers of the World Endurance Championship (WEC), attempted to unite the two organizations by scrapping the existing formula and adopting IMSA rules. This did not please Porsche, which was spending vast sums of money on engine development at the time. Porsche responded by boycotting the 24 Hours of Le Mans of that year. FISA responded by abandoning the rule change for the time being.

In 1987, FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre almost made a successful attempt to settle the dispute by announcing that turbochargers and fuel restrictions would be phased out by 1989 (excepting naturally aspirated engines below 3.5 liters). This attempt failed, as did another in 1991, in which with chassis ballast penalties for turbocharged cars rendered them uncompetitive, except at Le Mans.

IMSA continued to have success with its own Camel GT series.

In 1987, John Bishop had to undergo a heart bypass surgery, forcing him to rethink his priorities. He began to realise that the Camel GT series was in danger of becoming oriented toward the factory-backed teams and less to the privateers as Bishop originally intended. Rules were modified to accommodate the factory teams, which wanted to get into the series, despite Bishop's belief that such changes would be unfavorable to the series in the long run, especially if they failed to meet their objectives.

In January 1989, the Bishops sold the company to Mike Cone and Jeff Parker, owners of the IMSA Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Bishop shortly stepped down as the organisation's president in favor of Mark Raffauf, his deputy president and the organisation's representative on the ACCUS (Automobile Competition Committee for the United States), an FIA recognised sporting body. Cone and Parker in turn sold the organization to businessman Charles Slater by the early 1990s.

In 1996 Slater sold the organization with previously accumulated debt to Roberto Muller (ex-CEO of Reebok) and Wall Street based portfolio manager for Bill Gates, Andy Evans, who also was an IndyCar owner and owner/driver of the Scandia World Sports Car team. These changes would lead to the departure of many of the executive board members. Evans was responsible for the name change to Professional Sports Car Racing (PSCR).

In 1998 the United States Road Racing Championship was revived as an alternative to Professional Sports Car Racing, involving the Sports Car Club of America and headed by a group of competitors and ex-IMSA personnel, including John Bishop, Bill France Jr., Rob Dyson, Roger Penske, Skip Barber, and Ralph Sanchez. They wanted to keep rules within the United States. When this initially failed, as a result Don Panoz and Barber departed to affiliate themselves with PSCR.

In the spring of 1998, Don Panoz created a partnership with the Automobile Club de L'Ouest (ACO), the organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, to begin a 10-hour race in the spirit of Le Mans, dubbed the Petit Le Mans to be held at Panoz's Road Atlanta facility. After the success of the inaugural Petit Le Mans as a part of the 1998 Professional SportsCar Racing Championship season, Panoz announced a new full season championship for 1999, to be known as the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) which adopted the ACO's rulebook under PSCR sanction. The new series replaced the Professional Sports Car Racing championship as PSCR's headline series.

Under tremendous pressure from team owners and management, Evans sold Professional Sports Car Racing to Don Panoz in 2001, to solidify the American Le Mans Series. Don Panoz renamed the sanctioning organization back to the International Motor Sports Association and was the official sanctioning body of the ALMS, as well as its support series, the Prototype Lites, the Star Mazda series, GT3 Cup Challenge and the Panoz GT Pro series. IMSA became part of Panoz Motorsports Group, which included the ALMS, Elan Motorsports Technology and Mosport, Sebring and Road Atlanta race tracks. Scott Atherton was appointed President of Panoz Motorsports Group and he appointed Tim Mayer to manage IMSA. IMSA's main series, the [ALMS] focused on manufacturer entries along with top privateers with the worldwide prestige of championship greatly increasing.

After the 1999 USRRC season was cancelled halfway through its schedule due to a lack of competitors, a second attempt at a new sports car sanction body known as the Grand American Road Racing Association was created with full support of NASCAR's France family and other motorsports notables and had its inaugural season in 2000. Grand-Am struggled early on, but proved to be a formidable competitor to the ALMS in later years with a different philosophy based on lower-tech cars, most notably its prototype category Daytona Prototype, giving larger fields and closer competition. Much like the split between Champ Car and the IRL, this split was seen by many as being detrimental to the sport as a whole.

In 2012, Don Panoz sold the Braselton, Georgia-based ALMS to Grand-Am Road Racing, in turn owned directly by NASCAR and helped organize a merger between the ALMS and the Rolex Sports Car Series. In 2013 the unified series was announced as the Tudor United SportsCar Championship (now IMSA SportsCar Championship). The announcement also confirmed that IMSA will manage and sanction the new series, operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of NASCAR.

On September 19, 2019, Scott Atherton announced retirement from his position as the President of the International Motor Sports Association at the end of 2019. He had held that role since the merger of IMSA's American Le Mans Series with the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series in 2014. One month following that announcement, then-director of Mazda's motorsports program in North America, John Doonan, was confirmed to be Atherton's replacement. Ed Bennett, longtime NASCAR executive, was also President and CEO of Grand-Am Road Racing from August 2011 to December 2013 during the merger period and has continued as CEO of the modern era IMSA since January 2014.

At the 2021 Daytona 24 Hours, IMSA and the ACO announced the historic alignment of the technical regulations for sportscar racing, which was further detailed in June of that year, which brought about the convergence of all sportscar regulations between the FIA, IMSA and the ACO.

In January 2022, IMSA bought Historic Sportscar Racing, whose events include the Classic 24 Hours of Daytona, the Classic 12 Hours of Sebring and the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion.