Auto racing design and production | |
Fate | acquired by Élan Motorsport Technologies |
Founded | 1991 |
Founder | Chip Ganassi, Ken Anderson |
Defunct | 2004 |
Headquarters | Braselton, Georgia, United States |
Website | www |
G-Force Technologies (formerly Chip Ganassi Racing Ltd.) was an American racing car manufacturer originally formed by Americans Chip Ganassi and Ken Anderson in 1991. Ganassi would leave the company early on and the company was renamed G Force Precision Engineering. The company built successful cars in the Indy Racing League and 24 Hours of Le Mans. G-Force race cars won 4 Indianapolis 500's, and 2 IRL Championships. G-Force was purchased by Élan Motorsport Technologies in 2002 and all manufacturing was moved to Elan's facilities in Braselton, GA. Ken Anderson would leave to form Falcon Cars with Michael Kranefuss to build a competing chassis for the 2004 IRL season. Former Lola designer Simon Marshall would be brought on to design its new IRL chassis for 2004 which was branded the Panoz G-Force. During the winter of 2004, all remaining G-Force operations in England were moved to Braselton, GA and the England operations of G-Force were shut down. By the start of the 2005 season, the G-Force name was retired.
The Nissan R391 was a prototype racing car built by Nissan and their motorsports counterpart Nismo for competition at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was a replacement for the R390 GT1, which was no longer legal in its production-based class.
With major rule changes in the GT in 1999, major manufacturers were no longer able to build homologation specials which resembled prototypes more than true GT cars. Thus Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Panoz, BMW, and Audi turned to the prototypes class, either using open cockpit prototypes or closed cockpit cars which were actually evolutions of their former GT cars. Nissan, believing that a purpose built prototype would be superior to an evolved GT car, decided to go the route of an open cockpit.