The 1997 SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge season was the eighth running of the

Sports Car Club of America The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is a non-profit American automobile club and sanctioning body supporting road racing, rallying, and autocross in the United States. Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional r ...

's World Challenge series. The 1997 season is notable in that it began a thirteen-year era of the touring car class being contested primarily between BMW, Mazda, and

Acura Acura is the luxury vehicle, luxury and performance division of Japanese automaker Honda, based primarily in North America. The brand was launched in the United States and Canada on March 27, 1986, marketing luxury and performance automobiles. It ...

. This changed in 2010 with the adoption of an entirely new format. 1997 also saw the end of combined classes, with separate races for each group. This lasted until the 2010 season. After several years of having at least three groups, the series was reduced to only two, a format unseen since the series' inaugural season. This went unchanged for thirteen years, after which the series changed to three and later four groups. After only mild success for three seasons, the

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

brand got its final wins this season as another blow to

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

in the series.

Results

References

{{Speed World Challenge years GT World Challenge America