Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge

Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge

Category	Grand touring Touring car
Country or region	United States Canada
Inaugural season	2004
Last Drivers' champion	Charles Espenlaub Charles Putman
Official website	grand-am.com
Current season

Competitors in the KONI Challenge on a pre-grid at New Jersey Motorsports Park in 2008

The Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge is a grand touring and touring car racing series run by the Grand American Road Racing Association. Originating from the Canadian Motorola Cup, the series was taken over by Grand-Am in 2001 to become the Grand-Am Cup following the demise of rival IMSA's Firehawk series of similar rules in the US. KONI became series sponsor for the start of the 2007 season when the series became known as the KONI Challenge Series, before renaming once more prior to the start of the 2009 season as the KONI Sports Car Challenge. The series name was once again changed for the 2010 season.

The Continental Challenge is the support series for Grand-Am's premier offering, the Rolex Sports Car Series.

Races

In traditional sports car racing format, the races are often run with both GS and ST classes on track simultaneously, which is known as a "combined" race. Occasionally, races will be run in "split classes", with separate races for both classes. Current races are 2 hours 30 minutes with a required driver change.

Telecasts

• Speed Channel currently broadcasts the series exclusively. However, Speed will only cover races that occur on the same weekend as a Rolex Series race. Most races are also streamed live on SPEED2.com

Vehicles

The series uses two classes in each race:

• The Grand Sport (GS) class features large-displacement 6-cylinder or 8-cylinder sports cars as well as small displacement 4-cylinder forced induction sports cars.

• The Street Tuner (ST) class is for smaller 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder compact sedans, coupes, or roadsters.

All vehicles have fewer modifications than most series, using a "showroom stock" format.

The format is reminiscent of the original Trans Am Series, combining conventional sports cars and touring cars, though the Trans Am Series usually had a single driver per car, unlike the Koni series, which has two drivers per car. Some vehicles in the Continental Challenge have actually been painted to resemble the original Trans Am cars, such as the Boss 302 Mustangs of George Follmer and Parnelli Jones or the original Sunoco Camaro.

Champions

Season	GS Champion	Car	ST Champion	Car
2004	Craig Stanton Terry Borcheller	Cadillac CTS-V	David Haskell Sylvain Tremblay	Mazda RX-8
2005	David Empringham Scott Maxwell	Ford Mustang	David Haskell Sylvain Tremblay	Mazda RX-8
2006	Anders Hainer Spencer Pumpelly	BMW M3	Don Salama Will Turner	BMW 3 Series
2007	Jeff Segal Jep Thornton	BMW M3	Trevor Hopwood Adam Burrows	BMW 3 Series
2008	Joe Foster Scott Maxwell	Ford Mustang	Jamie Holtom	Chevrolet Cobalt
2009	Kenny Wilden	Ford Mustang	Christian Miller	Honda Civic Si
2010	Charles Espenlaub Charles Putman	BMW M3	David Thilenius1 Lawson Aschenbach1	Honda Civic Si

¹The Bimmerworld 328i of Bill Heumann and Seth Thomas and the Compass360 Civic of Thilenius and Aschenbach finished the 2010 season tied in ST points. As both teams had the same amount of wins and second place finishes, Thilenius and Aschenbach won the title by virtue of having more third place finishes.

External links

• Official website