Racing and Chevrolet — It’s been a winning tradition for 100 years. “Before Chevrolet was a brand, Louis Chevrolet and his brothers made a name for themselves behind the wheel of a race car,” says Jim Campbell, GM vice president of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports.

Discover how deep-rooted heritage and forward-thinking engineering have propelled Chevy to the forefront of racing:

What we learn on the track continues to improve the Chevy you drive on the street. We don’t just test Corvette ZR1 to its limits at Germany’s challenging Nürburgring – we also tune suspension systems of Camaro SS and ZL1 and Cruze on the same track. Corvettes that race in the American Le Mans Series have been co-developed with the Corvette Z06 you can buy in any Chevrolet showroom. The small block V8 that dominates NASCAR^® competition and the small block V8 under the hood of Camaro and Corvette share a basic architecture and DNA that dates back to 1955. Chevrolet offers more E85-capable cars and trucks than any other manufacturer. And ethanol-blended fuels are now approved for NASCAR, Indy^® and ALMS racing. In any series we compete in, our ultimate goal is to take what we learn and apply it to the cars and trucks our customers drive.

The series we race in are as varied as the cars and trucks we sell. You’ll see Chevy power and racing technology in all the following racing series:

Chevrolet — and the legendary small block V8 — has been the dominant force in NASCAR for decades. NASCAR is an ongoing durability test, and many performance and aero improvements over the years have found their way into Chevrolet production cars. Chevrolet has won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Manufacturers’ Championship 35 times and Jimmie Johnson has driven his Impala to an unprecedented five consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Driver’s Championships — the first driver to ever do so.

Grand AM racing has its roots in the Trans-Am series of sports-car racing that made the Camaro Z28 a legend in its own time in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today, there are two primary classes within the Grand AM Prototype series: The Grand Touring (GT) Class features production-based race cars. This is where Camaro competes with Porsche and Mustang on iconic American sports-car tracks.

The Daytona Prototype class is where manufacturers’ bring their latest engine and chassis designs to compete against each other. The Corvette Daytona Prototype race car will make its debut at Daytona next January 26-29, 2012.

Corvette Racing is America’s premier production sports car team, going head to head with Ferrari, Porsche and BMW. The ALMS Corvette race car is clearly related to the production Corvette. In fact, the foundation for the C6.R race car is the aluminum chassis used by the production Corvette Z06 and ZR1. To date, Corvette Racing has won eight American Le Mans Series manufacturers and team championships, and seven driver championships. Corvette Racing has also enjoyed international success in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s leading sports car race, with six class victories since 2001.

Cruze made its presence known in a big way at the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) in 2010 and again in 2011, seizing both the Drivers' Championship and the Manufacturers' Championship. Racing against BMW and other European sport sedans, the WTCC offers a truly global audience with races taking places in four continents (Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa).

On May 30, 1911, Arthur Chevrolet drove 30 laps in the first Indianapolis 500 before mechanical problems sidelined his car. On November 3, 1911, Louis Chevrolet and Billy Durant incorporated the Chevrolet Motor Car Co. in Detroit. The close link between Chevrolet and the “greatest spectacle in racing” is now a century old and growing stronger.

In 2012, Chevrolet will be back home again in Indiana with a new twin-turbocharged, direct-injected V6 racing engine powered by renewable E85 ethanol fuel. Developed by General Motors and Ilmor Engineering, the Chevrolet IndyCar V6 will have a displacement of 2.2 liters and an aluminum block and cylinder heads. Notably, direct injection, E85-capable engines, and turbocharging are all important technologies featured in many Chevrolet vehicles.

Wherever great race cars gather, from Indy to Le Mans to Elkhart Lake, you can be sure that Chevy will be there, running flat-out for that checkered flag. Louis Chevrolet would expect nothing else.