Road Racing

There is a long tradition of road racing on real streets in the United States. The most famous American road courses are all purpose-built, but some where the original tradition evolved include:

• Virginia International Raceway at Danville, Virginia
• Summit Point Raceway at Summit Point, West Virginia
• Riverside International Raceway at Riverside, California (now closed)
• Watkins Glen International at Watkins Glen, New York
• Road America at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
• and Infineon Raceway at Sonoma, California.

After a few decades of such events three sons of Barron Collier—Barron, Miles, and Samuel—founded the Automobile Racing Club of America in 1933. That organization became the Sports Car Club of America in 1944. Throughout its history, American race car drivers such as Briggs Cunningham, Lake Underwood, Carroll Shelby, and Mark Donohue were among the contestants at these road racing events.

Other less famous purpose-built road course include: Barber Motorsports Park, Miller Motorsports Park, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Heartland Park Topeka, Lime Rock Park, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and Road Atlanta. Additionally, Grand Prix-style road course racing over public streets is making something of a comeback; the most famous race of this sort currently held is the one hosted annually in Long Beach, California. Other famous street circuits in North America include events held in St. Petersburg, Florida, Vancouver, Canada, and Toronto, Canada. Airport runways figure into several part-time road courses in North America: Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Ohio hosts a Champ Car race every summer; the St. Petersburg course uses the runway of a small airport as its main straight, and Sebring Raceway, home of the prestigious 12-hour race in March, was formerly a military airfield in Sebring, Florida.

Global road-racing series such as Formula One car racing and MotoGP motorcycle racing are almost always conducted on dedicated race tracks—with only a few exceptions. Several of these tracks are world-renowned, such as the circuits at Le Mans, Imola, and Silverstone. Recent expansion of these international series has resulted in dedicated tracks being built in Qatar in the Middle East, Sepang in Malaysia, and Shanghai in China.

External Links:
http://www.rrdc.org/
http://www.scca.org/
http://www.wera.com/
http://www.nasaracing.net/nasa_regions.htm
http://www.sportbikes.com/