NASCAR to purchase Grand Am

[Lee Roy]

Found this at http://www.jayski.com

NASCAR to purchase Grand-Am: NASCAR will announce it has purchased the Grand-American Road Racing Association, the News-Journal learned late Wednesday. Full details of the sale are expected today. Grand-Am, which is based in Daytona Beach and sanctions sportscar, road-racing events, was previously a stand-alone entity with close relationships to NASCAR and International Speedway Corp. NASCAR apparently bought Grand-Am to help the 10-year-old sanctioning body cross-brand with stock car racing's mass appeal. Grand-Am has six racing series, including the marquee Rolex Series, which features Daytona Prototypes.(Daytona Beach News Journal)(9-4-2008)

[Danske]

From a more official press release:

While both organizations will continue to operate independently, resources such as communications, marketing, research and public relations will be shared.

Elsewhere it was also said that Grand-Am would not be changing management.

[nigelred5]

Semantics. The France family created the Grand AM and owned it before, now the France family's NASCAR Holding company owns it. Who owns the NASCAR Holding company? Not everything's all rosy in Daytona. IMHO, they are simply cutting costs.

[F1boat]

I hope that the series will continue to exist.

[Danske]

The teams so far seem happy about the change.

[nigelred5]

I don't think there's any reason to think Gran Am won't keep going. The teams that compete in the various Grand Am series seem very happy and content with the way things are run. Sure, it's NASCAR in rear engined cars, but it works. Their marketing should help promote tings better. No, it's not the most technologically advanced, but Grand AM is good racing to watch. Certainly better that waiting to see which Audi is going to win. Maybe a slight modification to the chassis regs could be made to allow designers the freedom to make a nicer looking prototype with a more streamlined greenhouse. They may look slow on tv, but at the track, they look plenty fast and are exciting to watch.

[ChrisS]

Could the sale of Grand Am have anything to do with the fact that Daytona Motorsports Group (also led By Jim France And Roger Edmondson) is getting ready to go up against the motorcycle manufacturers for the control of motorcycle road racing in the US?

[Danske]

There have been rumors of NASCAR buying Grand-Am for a year or more, so I wouldn't think that the motorcycles business would be the main reason as that's a recent development.

[wmcot]

Could the sale of Grand Am have anything to do with the fact that Daytona Motorsports Group (also led By Jim France And Roger Edmondson) is getting ready to go up against the motorcycle manufacturers for the control of motorcycle road racing in the US?

Would that give us NASCYCLE???