GRAND AM live on Motors TV in 2013

Motors TV will have live coverage of the 2013 GRAND-AM Road Racing championship or as it is also known, the Rolex Sports Car Series. Created in 1999 and headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida, Grand-Am kicks off its season with its most important race, the Daytona 24-Hours, which will be held on January 26 and 27. This year, Motors TV will air live coverage from the twice around the clock classic. The big news in 2013 is the eventual merger with its rival championship, the American Le Mans Seriesin 2014. No word as yet as to what the new championship will be called, but you can imagine there will be a lot of interest and large fields. However, there is still a title to be won this year and rest assured there are many teams that will want to claim the very last Grand-Am title.

Grand-Am features two classes: DP and GT. The DPs (Daytona Prototypes) are closed cockpit cars and slightly resemble the Le Mans prototypes of the 1980s. Teams can choose between various chassis with the front-runners being Riley, Dallara, Lola, Doran and Coyote. When it comes to power plants, there is a long list of suppliers from Porsche to BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Infiniti and Lexus. For the most part they are 5-litre V8 normally aspirated engines, with power output in the neighbourhood of 500bhp and top speeds of 300+ km/h.
 

The Grand – Am GT class features the usual suspects in this form of competition from Porsche to Ferrari, BMW, Pontiac, Chevrolet Camaro and Corvette, Mazda, Nissan, Ford, Jaguar and Audi…brake horse power ranges from 390 to 450bhp.

Daytona is the biggest race of the season

While Daytona is the biggest race of the season there is another major event all the teams want to win: the Six Hours of Watkins Glen. But there are also rounds at North America’s most famous circuits such as Road America, Mid-Ohio, Laguna Seca, Indianapolis and Montreal. Standard race distance is 2h45. Points are awarded to both team and driver, as long as he or she spends at least 30-minutes in the car and completes at least one lap under green flag conditions. Point’s distribution is as follows 35-32-30-28-26-25-…all the way down to 1 point for 30th place.

The DP category is represented by some of the US’s very best teams: Chip Ganassi, Krohn, Flying Lizard, Level 5, Sun Trust Racing, Action Express Racing and Starworks…The leader in GT is long-time Porsche entrant Brumos Porsche.

In 2012, the team of Scott Pruett-Memo Rojas (Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates – Riley-BMW) won its third consecutive Grand-Am crown. In GT it was the Ferrari duo of Emil Assentato and Jeff Segal winning the title.

American motor racing will take centre stage on the High Speed Television Channel in 2013. In addition to live coverage of the Grand-Am Championship, Motors TV will air live coverage of the NASCAR Nationwide Series and the ALMS.