Inside IMSA's Legendary GTP Race Cars

Professional automobile racing has always been dominated by sanctioning bodies whose main goal is to ensure competition: making sure the cars are matched in shape, size, chassis, and engine combination or size. But what about an all-out competition, in which one team's idea of the fastest car could [...]
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Professional automobile racing has always been dominated by sanctioning bodies whose main goal is to ensure competition: making sure the cars are matched in shape, size, chassis, and engine combination or size. But what about an all-out competition, in which one team's idea of the fastest car could be pitted against another's regardless of parity? This was what the International Motor Sports association (ISMA) Grand Touring Prototypes (GTP) race series was all about. Running form 1981 to 1993, it was one of the most exhilarating racing experiences of all time, and typically drew 100,00 spectators to race weekends.This is the first book to profile the amazing machines that resulted from the GTP's flat-out competition among different - and passionate - ideas about what was the fastest way round the track: the V-12 with it's superior ground-effect tunnels but higher centre pf gravity; the flat six with a low centre of gravity but severely restricted ground tunnels; cars that used fans to suck themselves down by the track; the elaborate wings and air dams employed by others; Audi's 90, with its advanced four wheel drive, the turbo charged Porsche 911 Carrera RSR, Mazda's RX-7.Here are the people behind the free-for-all, the culmination of almost a century of automobile racing experience, and here are eighteen of the most competitive vehicles they designed. using photographs, diagrams, drawings, first-person accounts, from the men who drove and designed them.This book provides a detailed look at the technology and people that drove some of the world's most exciting race cars, the like of which may never be seen again.