The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) is a North American sports car racing sanctioning body based in Daytona Beach, Florida, under the jurisdiction of the ACCUS arm of the FIA. It was started by John Bishop, a former executive director of SCCA, and his wife Peggy in 1969 with help from Bill France Sr. of NASCAR. Beginning in 2014, IMSA is the sanctioning body of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the premier series resulting from the merger of Grand-Am Road Racing and the American Le Mans Series. IMSA is owned by NASCAR, as a division of the company.
Formula DRIFT is a United States-based motorsport drifting series. Formula DRIFT was co-founded by Jim Liaw and Ryan Sage in 2003 as a sister company to Slipstream Global Marketing, the same partnership that introduced D1 Grand Prix to the United States. The new entity would solely own, operate and launch the first official drifting series in North America. Formula DRIFT is not associated with the FIA series of formula racing championships.
Jörg Müller is a Dutch-born German BMW factory driver.
Nobuteru Taniguchi is a Japanese racing driver and drifting driver who currently competes in the Super GT racing series. Taniguchi is commonly nicknamed "NOB" or "The Pimp" as a reference to his S15 Silvia which he is best known for.
Hankook Tire & Technology Co., Ltd., also known simply as Hankook, is a South Korean tire company based in Seoul. It is the seventh largest tire company in the world. It is a part of Hankook & Company.
Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd. is a global tire and rubber company based in Japan. It is part of the Sumitomo Group. The company makes a wide range of rubber based products, including automobile tires, golf balls and tennis balls. Sumitomo tire brands include Dunlop, Falken and Ohtsu. Sumitomo also manufactures and sells the sport equipments under the Dunlop Sport brand.
Marc Lieb is a former German Porsche factory motor-racing driver. He won the FIA GT Championship in 2003 and 2005, and the European Le Mans Series in 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010. He won the 24 Hours Nürburgring four times, one time the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2016, in the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring, in the 2003 24 hours of Spa and in the 2007 Petit Le Mans. He is also the 2016 FIA World Endurance Champion.
Sascha Maassen is a veteran sports car driver.
The Flying Lizard Motorsports group is a motorsport team from Sonoma, California, formed by Seth Neiman in early 2003. The team competed in the full American Le Mans Series season, as well as the 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The team went on to win six driver and team championships in the American Le Mans Series, becoming a Porsche factory team and Porsche Motorsport North America's development partner from 2007 to 2012. The team helped develop the first- and second-generation 997 GT3 RSR as well as bring it to victory several times in its six-year run in the series. The team solely raced Porsche cars from 2004 to 2019, becoming a staple in the Porsche racing community.
Nathan Freke is a racing driver. He was the 2006 British Formula Ford Champion. Freke has held four British Kart Racing Championship Titles and in 2005 became the only driver ever to win an FIA/CIK Superkart Race in a Division 2 Kart against Division 1 Karts,.
Johnny Mowlem is a professional British racing driver. During his career Mowlem was ranked amongst the best sports car/GT drivers in the world. Mowlem famously fell off his chair whilst commentating at the 2023 Le Mans 24hr race, having competed in every class of world championship sports car racing.
Carl Rydquist is a Swedish-American eight-time auto racing champion, a SAG-AFTRA on-camera stunt and precision driver and a Nurburgring Industry Pool driver. Rydquist gained notoriety for his speed in 2001 when he beat more than 1100 enthusiasts and professional racedrivers in a gocart challenge created by Eurosport to promote their Super Racing Weekend FIA GT and ETCC sports coverage. The event propelled him to his first GT Endurance ride with Apex Racing's Porsche. Rydquist actively competes in racing and has competed in professional drifting. In Rydquist's auto racing career, he currently has a victory in more than one third of his races and podium finishes in three out of four Touring and GT car endurance and sprint races.
Ahmad Al Harthy is an Omani racing driver. He won the 2012 Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain Pro-Am 1 Championship and in 2017 became the Blancpain Endurance Cup Pro-Am Champion along with British team-mate Jonny Adam.
Lucas Luhr is a German racing driver. He is a staple of the American Le Mans Series during the 2000s and early 2010s, winning the GT class with Porsche in 2002, the LMP2 category in 2006, and taking the overall LMP1 championship as part of the Audi Sport North America works outfit in 2008. He also won the P1 title in 2012 and 2013, driving for Honda-fielding Muscle Milk Pickett Racing.
Timo Bernhard is a former driver from Germany. He was a sports car driver from Porsche, but was seconded to Audi for selected events in 2009 and 2010. He is the ninth and most recent driver to complete the informal triple crown of endurance racing. On 29 June 2018, he became the first person in 35 years to break the all-time Nürburgring Nordschleife lap record, set by Stefan Bellof in 1983 with a Porsche 956, in a derestricted Porsche 919 Evo with a time of 5:19.546.
Giti Tire is a Singapore headquartered tire company, with eight manufacturing facilities, more than 32,000 global employees, and distribution to a market of more than 130 countries.
Takayuki Kinoshita is a Japanese racing car driver, author, and automotive journalist. Kinoshita is affiliated with Toyota Motorsport's GAZOO Racing arm, with whom he scored SP8 class wins in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 24 Hours Nürburgring driving the Lexus LFA. He also won A8 class in the 2004 24 Hours Nürburgring driving a Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) for Falken Motorsports.
Dominik Farnbacher is a German sports car racing driver, and currently an SRT factory driver, driving an SRT Viper GTS-R in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship.
The 2014 United SportsCar Championship was the inaugural season of the International Motor Sports Association's new series created out of a merger of the Rolex Sports Car Series and the American Le Mans Series and the first to be held under the name as the United SportsCar Championship. It began with the 24 Hours of Daytona, the first time since the 1997 IMSA GT Championship season that IMSA sanctioned an event at Daytona International Speedway on 25 January and ended on 4 October at Petit Le Mans. It was the 44th overall season of IMSA GT championship racing tracing its lineage to the 1971 IMSA GT Championship.
Wei Fung Shaun Thong 唐偉楓 is a racecar driver from Hong Kong. Born in 1995, He is the 2017 Blancpain GT Series Asia Silver Cup champion and the 2020 Super Taikyu Series Champion. Thong is the first and only Chinese driver so far to win the Super Taikyu Series title in history. Thong began karting at the age of 14 and participated in various Asian Karting Championships including the Chinese Karting Championship (CKC), Asian Karting Open Championship (AKOC), Hong Kong Kart Club Championship (HKKC) and CIK KF1.
