V8 Supercar Championships

V8 Supercars Australia awards five championships Level One and Level Two for Drivers, Manufacturers Championship and Level One Teams Championship and Level Two Privateers Team Championship.

The Level One Australian Touring Car Championship now known as the V8 Supercar Championship Series caters for the 31 fully professional cars run by the 14 two-car and 3 one-car well-sponsored V8 Supercar teams. The series is commercially successful and highly competitive, with races all over Australia, one in New Zealand, and in 2006, the first race in Bahrain. Tracks range from street circuits (such as the Adelaide circuit) to more permanent road courses (such as the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit). The largest single event is the Bathurst 1000.

The racing is very close and aggressive between all the V8 Championship Series teams, with usually less than a second separating the top 25 cars. Teams design and construct their own cars and engines (Some teams opt to buy engines from stronger teams, e.g. SBR, 888, BJR and PCR use SBR developed Ford V8's, while HRT, HSVDT and Perkins Engineering use HMS developed Holden V8's while the rest of the Holden teams use their own developed Holden V8's) leading to minor/major (depending on teams) engineering differences among teams despite the cars being the same make.

Both Ford and Holden provide significant, though varying, levels of sponsorship to the majority of teams that run their cars. From 1996 to 2002, V8 Supercars Holden Racing Team, had a decisive competitive edge over most of the opposition. More recently, the sport has seen the return to prominence of Ford through Marcos Ambrose and Stone Brothers Racing, winning in 2003 and 2004, as well as team-mate Russell Ingall who kept the title at SBR, winning a tight series in 2005

V8 Supercars is Australia's third largest sport behind AFL Football and Horse racing.

The first Australian Touring Car Championship under the V8 Supercar rules was won by Glenn Seton with his team-mate former Formula One world champion Alan Jones taking second in the championship.

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