Sports Car Racing Finds a Home, Online

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Grand-Am has completed development of the Grand-Am Community, an online social network built specifically for sports car racing fans. The new community features driver and staff blogs, expanded forums and multimedia galleries for user generated content including photos, audio and video.

"We're all very excited to offer sports car enthusiasts from around the world a social portal for them to interact together - drivers, competitors and fans alike," said Kevin Hindson, Grand-Am Vice President of Marketing and Communications.

In this initial version of the Grand-Am Community, only Racers and Grand-Am Staff will be able to post blogs. All users can comment on a blog, however, enabling open dialogue between drivers, staff and fans. The expanded forums now offer users a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor. Hyperlinks, emoticons, and image embedding functionalities are also available to fans.

Grand-Am.com visitors are no strangers to blogs and forum posts, but the expanded multimedia galleries will allow users to post their own photos, videos and audio clips for other fans to view and rate. These are grouped by "Experiences" so that fans can group various files together for others to sort through. In the future, Grand-Am staff will coordinate contests based on user submissions for ticket and merchandise giveaways.

The Grand American Road Racing Association, which operates and sanctions the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask No. 16 and the Grand-Am KONI Challenge Series, is the premier road racing organization in North America. The 15-race 2008 Rolex Series and the 11-race KONI Challenge Series calendars deliver professional sports car racing to key markets throughout North America in addition to being televised in the United States and Canada on SPEED and distributed globally through ESPN International. Learn more about Grand-Am at www.grand-am.com.