How the International Race of Champions (IROC) Tried to Find the Best Drivers in the World

Marc Urbano|Car and Driver”That argument will never be solved,” four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon told me from his perch atop a toolbox in a car hauler at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. It was a Saturday afternoon during Car Week 2025. Gordon had just finished an autograph session, and we were talking about the vintage IROC car he drove, the impressive lineup of past champions he had been racing with, and the argument I’d had with another automotive journalist earlier in the week about who were the best racing drivers in the world. During that argument, they had trotted out the old chestnut about F1 being the pinnacle of driver skill. Gordon and I disagreed.Marc Urbano|Car and Driver”There’s a large body of water between the various opinions,” Gordon said, referencing both the Eurocentricity of the F1 claims and the metaphorical distance in trying to compare skill sets as different as manhandling a stock car, landing a rally car, focusing a Formula 1 car, or even just being brave enough to get in a monster like a Top Fuel dragster. It was an appropriate conversation to have, though, since the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion was hosting an International Race of Champions (IROC) class for the first time, and IROC’s whole raison d’être was to answer the question, “If you put racers from different series in equal cars, who would win?”Marc Urbano|Car and DriverIROC began as a bit of a marketing stunt in the 1970s. Motorsports may have been losing the purity of the ’60s, but it was gaining mainstream attention with racing coverage of NASCAR, Indy, NHRA, Can-Am, and Trans-Am grabbing headlines, and names like Andretti, Petty, Allison, and Unser known worldwide. Television coverage was taking off, with sports shows garnering record views. The idea of a spec series that matched up drivers from open-wheel racing, stock cars, sports cars, and even dirt cars seemed like a TV-ready crowd pleaser. There were big names behind it. Team owner Roger Penske, football player turned Riverside track owner Les Richter, racer Jay Signore, and television promoter Mike Phelps joined forces to bring the biggest names in racing to duke it out in identical cars at a variety of tracks. “They did their best to really make them equal,” says Ray Evernham, former racer, NASCAR crew chief, and team owner. Evernham was a part of the engineering crew for IROC in the ’80s before he rose to fame with Jeff Gordon in stock car racing. He also headed up the return of the IROC cars to Laguna. When asked if the drivers felt the cars were equal, he laughed. “If they were winning, they did.”Marc Urbano|Car and DriverThe first year was perhaps more weighted toward the road racers, with drivers piloting Porsche 911 RSRs, flat-six-powered, lightweight machines with flared fenders, fiberglass whale-tail spoilers, aluminum wheels, and disc brakes, in four road-course races. They brought in F1 drivers Emerson Fittipaldi and Denny Hulme; Penske racers Mark Donohue, Peter Revson, and George Follmer; stock car drivers Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, and David Pearson; and open-wheel drivers Bobby Unser, A.J. Foyt, Gordon Johncock, and Roger McCluskey. There was some discussion that the road course focus and high-revving 3.0-liter engines put the NASCAR guys at a disadvantage. The Los Angeles Times published a story after the first race in October 1973 saying that “the quest for conformity was doomed from the start since half the field had limited experience driving a road course.” This wasn’t exactly true, since even if stock car racers were known more for their oval time, guys like Bobby Allison had done plenty of sports-fcar racing, and Petty had won five victories at Riverside Raceway. What seems more likely is that the Porsches were expensive and too fragile to maintain over four races, and when Chevrolet expressed interest in the series, the switch made sense to go to a Trans-Am–style Camaro for the second season.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverQuick break here to point out that the IROC seasons were four races held during the other racing series’ off-seasons in October and February to avoid conflict with the drivers’ main gigs. This makes looking back at IROC somewhat confusing since the “first year” of the championship starts in ’73 but ends in ’74. Mark Donohue took home that inaugural championship with wins at three out of the four races.The second season replaced some road-course runs with ovals, and Bobby Unser took the championship. AJ Foyt claimed wins in the following years, so that’s giving us champions from sports-car racing, NASCAR, and open-wheel racing, although to be fair to these drivers, they’d each done well in all of the above.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverAs the road courses picked up speed, drivers began to express concern about the safety of the IROC cars. Evernham recalls that it was Richard Petty who prompted the next iteration of the Camaro. “Story is that Richard Petty told them, ‘Hey, you cats are going to have to get a safer car if we’re going to be going this fast.’ So they went for the second-generation Camaro to Banjo Matthews in North Carolina and had him build kind of a NASCAR safetyish version of a Chevrolet Camaro.”These were tube-frame cars with fiberglass bodywork and carbureted small-block engines. They were easy to repair and fairly bulletproof, no matter what the driver was used to piloting. NASCAR drivers were starting to claim an edge over other competitors, perhaps due to the cars, or maybe just more interest in the competition (one can imagine it being difficult for European drivers to get over here for races on unfamiliar tracks), but Mario Andretti claimed back some cred for F1 and Indy with a win in ’78/’79.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverAn accident in 1980 coincided with the series taking a break for a few years before it returned in 1983 with a new-style Camaro that proved so popular, Chevy released a production model named after it. “Those are the cars that I worked on,” says Evernham. “I call them the Generation III IROC Camaros. Those cars we ran from 1984 through 1989. And then, toward the end of 1989, Chevrolet was pulling out, and IROC went to Dodge. They changed all of the Camaros to Dodge Daytonas, and they ran from ’90 through ’93. And then in ’94, they took the bodies off again and switched them to Dodge Avengers. So the cars that were built in 1984 ran all the way through 1995 with different bodies on them. That’s why there are not that many of the Generation III IROC Camaros out there, because the bodies were all changed.” The engines were also changed, going from Chevy to detuned Dodge V-8s.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverIn the late ’90s through the last IROC season in 2006, General Motors was back in, with Firebird bodies and 500-hp Chevy engines in the tube chassis. By then, it was pretty much a NASCAR event, with only stock car drivers participating. The last non-NASCAR champ was Al Unser Jr., in 1989, and while F1 driver Martin Brundle claimed a race victory in 1991, Dale Earnhardt beat him out for the championship. By 2006, there was a lack of sponsorship money and a loss of audience interest since the races were no longer showcasing a variety of drivers. By 2007, IROC was over.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverWhich brings us back to watching them race as a vintage event in 2025. Obviously, with multiple years represented, the race at the Historics wasn’t a fair fight, but the lineup was a true all-star list. Sports-car racer Tomy Drissi stayed in front of a hard-charging Dario Franchitti (representing IndyCar and declaring the race “mega-fun”), both in late-model Firebirds. NASCAR was close at their heels with a heated battle between 2004 champion Kurt Busch and our pal from earlier, Jeff Gordon.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverPorsche racer Patrick Long switched models to pilot a 1977 Camaro and brought it home to round out the top five. That’s an impressive list of names already, but now add in Bobby Labonte, McLaren chief Zak Brown, F1 racer Jenson Button, multi-time IROC champion Mark Martin, NASCAR record setter Bill Elliott, racer and collector Bruce Canepa, sports-car racer Scott Pruett, and grand marshal Al Unser Jr., and you end up with an autograph-signing table that had even Gordon saying he felt awed to be included.As hero-heavy as the 2025 reunion was, it still pales in comparison to the list of drivers who raced IROC over the series’ lifetime. We realize we’re getting kinda name-droppy in this recap, but basically every major player in NASCAR racing has dropped in sooner or later to run an IROC season, and despite the scheduling difficulties, Formula 1 drivers made appearances as well. Niki Lauda, James Hunt, and Brian Redman all gave it a go in the early years.Marc Urbano|Car and DriverEvernham says that one of the things he finds most amazing about the surviving cars is that because they were reused for several years, each one has hosted numerous racing legends. “The number of incredible superstar drivers that have driven them because they’ve raced for that long is unbelievable,” he says, with genuine enthusiasm. “I mean, we’ve got cars driven by Formula 1 winners and NASCAR guys and IndyCar guys, all the same car. We’ve got cars that all three Unsers drove.”Marc Urbano|Car and DriverNASCAR racer Mark Martin (who holds the title for most IROC championships with five) says that being asked to compete in the series was one of the most exciting moments of his career. “I’m just a kid from Arkansas; it was such an honor to be invited,” he says. ” I got to race against Martin Brundle, and not only was the racing great, but it was a treat for all the drivers to have a chance to have a little personal interaction with one another. I became a huge fan of Sébastien Bourdais, for example, someone that I would have never talked with or raced against if it hadn’t been for IROC.”Elana Scherr|Car and DriverMartin was equally excited to come back to his car for the reunion, both for the social experience and to get a chance to run Laguna Seca. I was surprised to find out that quite a few of the drivers at the Historics had never had a run on the famous corkscrew. “NASCAR didn’t race here,” explained Gordon, who said he’d raced it in iRacing but was delighted to do it in person. Kurt Busch said he came out for the track, but also to relive one of his childhood memories. “As a kid, I was such a fan, all the candy colors of the cars and the format. It was so old-school, the guys would carry their driver’s bag out to the track no matter who they were.”Marc Urbano|Car and DriverDespite its popularity with the drivers, IROC racing was a victim of motorsports’ success. As seasons got busier, and drivers became hot properties for their teams and sponsors, there was far less flexibility to schedule in another series, especially if it was in a competitor brand. As brilliant an idea as it was, it seems unlikely we’ll get to see anything like the first seasons of IROC again, which means we’re going to have to keep arguing over which series has the best drivers. “Next time you get in that fight, call me,” said Gordon at the end of our conversation. “I want to be there.”
Source: caranddriver.com