and
Porsche 911 GT3 R competing at the 2021 race Following the demise of the
World Sportscar Championship in 1992, sports car racing was left without a major worldwide series in which to compete. The
24 Hours of Le Mans remained a remnant, still competed by a large number of sports cars, but mostly on a single race basis. Various sports car leagues had sprung up since the WSC's demise without major success, including the
International Motor Sports Association (IMSA)'s replacement for their GTP series, the Professional SportsCar Racing series. In Europe, two series were also developed, the
FIA Sportscar Championship and the
FIA GT Championship, although they were not combined like IMSA's series.
Don Panoz, owner of the
Road Atlanta racing course, collaborated with the organizers of the
24 Hours of Le Mans, the
Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), to form a new sports car endurance race at the track for 1998, called Petit Le Mans (French for
little Le Mans). The event would adopt the ACO's rules, and in addition to agreeing to lend the Le Mans name out to Panoz, the ACO offered class winners automatic invitations to the following year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. The race would be similar to the
12 Hours of Sebring, in that it did not run a full 24 hours like Le Mans. Instead, the race would be 10 hours or , whichever came first. IMSA agreed to let the race be the season finale of their series with a special one-off format, featuring competitors from Le Mans. However, IMSA and Le Mans ran slightly different formulas for their competitors, thus forcing the organizers to create seven different classes: LMP1, LMGT1, and LMGT2 for the ACO-compliant cars, and WSC, GT1, GT2, and GT3 for IMSA's competitors. Even though both organizers used the GT1 and GT2 names the classes were not actually the same, which is why the ACO classes are preceded by LM. If Petit Le Mans proved to be successful, the ACO would look into developing a series around the same formula. The inaugural event in 1998 attracted 31 entries, including that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning Porsche factory team. A satisfactory number of spectators attended the event, while overall honors for the race were contested between the factory
Porsche 911 GT1-98 and
LMP1-98 cars as well as multiple
Ferrari 333 SPs and
Panoz Esperante GTR-1s. Before the race had finished, an agreement was made for Panoz to establish the
American Le Mans Series in 1999 with the support of the ACO, replacing the
IMSA GT Championship. The 2009 and 2015 races were shortened due to heavy rains making the track impassable. The 2015 race featured the first time a
GT car won overall against the faster prototypes. Rain from
Hurricane Joaquin created a flooded track the entire race causing multiple cautions and a red flag, allowing GTLM cars to leap-frog the prototypes that were struggling for grip in the conditions. Nick Tandy, winner of the
2015 24 Hours of Le Mans, and co-driver Patrick Pilet took the checkered flag when officials called the race with a little over two hours remaining. ==Race specifics==