Collecting, Preserving and Sharing History
The International Motor Racing Research Center collects, shares and preserves the history of motorsports. Spanning continents, eras and race series, the Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world. The Center welcomes serious researchers and the casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on our shelves and walls, and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events.
The Center’s collection documents the history of racing in the more than 4000 books or 250 different motorsports magazines and newspapers titles; club and sanctioning body records; race results, programs and posters; papers of motorsports journalists and scholars; correspondence of race organizers; and still and moving images housed onsite and in our expanding offsite collections storage facilities. Its knowledgeable research and archives staff assists hundreds of scholars, journalists, authors, documentary film makers, drivers and race car owners from all over the globe with inquiries about motorsports history every year.
Preserving Racing History
The International Motor Racing Research Center was created with the mission to preserve and share the materials from racing history, from all race series and all race tracks worldwide. The IMRRC adheres to professional archival standards in caring for the hundreds of thousands of items in our collections. Whether a piece of rare fine art or an autographed book, a press kit or a home movie, a prize-winning photograph or a ticket stub from a race last season, each item is treated with the utmost care as it is cataloged and located in a secure, climate-controlled environment.
The IMRRC operates as a library, with every item in the collections available for public inspection and use, though limited to on-site. The staff is committed to digitizing images, and many complete collections have been scanned. A project to convert 8 mm, 16 mm and VHS film to DVD format also is underway.
Sharing Racing History
The International Motor Racing Research Center is designed to serve as both a research library and an archive and welcomes everyone, from the serious researcher to the casual fan. People unable to visit the Center are invited to submit their questions to the Center’s staff via a dedicated email address. The cost of research services is based on the extent of the question. A base fee of $25 per hour is requested, but oftentimes the request is handled free of charge.
Thousands of reference questions have been answered since the Center opened. Due to the high demand, the Center staff asks for questioners’ patience, as the requests are handled in the order in which they are received. Researchers planning to visit the Center to use our resources are asked to contact the staff ahead of time, if possible, so that the materials can be readied for them.
Funding for general operations comes through member support, corporate sponsorship, and grants from local foundations. The Center, a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization, also benefits from endowment and outright gifts. Fund-raising activities include an annual car sweepstakes and award dinner.
Our Mission
To collect, preserve and share the global history of motorsports. Our extensive collection includes thousands of hours of film and video, hundreds of thousands of photographs, as well as thousands of cubic feet of periodicals, newsletters, rare books, race results, race programs, artwork, trophies and much, much more. We are dedicated to preserving and sharing these priceless artifacts that might otherwise be lost to future generations.
Our Vision
To become the world’s leading professional archive of motorsports history and to share that history in innovative and inclusive ways that become not only recognized as best practice globally, but create sustainability by drawing in new generations of motor racing fans.
