Although the perception of racing in the general populace in the US is oval racing, most Eurasian and Oceanic countries familiar with racing are more familiar with what Americans call "road course racing". As the name implies, the courses turn left AND right, making them even more geometrically fucked up than their "oval" counterparts, looking more like rounded-off complex polygons than vague ovals. Or rounded rectangles. Most road racing circuits are still somewhat biased towards a given direction though, usually being clockwise (more right than left) rather than counterclockwise (like every oval on the NASCAR tour ever
).
The car from the opening post is from the Japanese Super GT series, a "road course" racing series featuring two different car classes, GT300 (the slower, pro X amateur class) and GT500 (the faster, basically pros only class). Both classes race on track at the same time but have winners for both overall and within their class. If you ever look around on some racing simulation internet spaces and start seeing anime girl liveries as add-ons, they're probably for a mod that pertains to this series. It has a fairly large fan base in Japan, and has cult status in Europe and the US thanks to video games like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo. What you're seeing in the screenshot is a GT500 class Toyota Supra from Forza Motorsport 4, painted by yours truly. The livery is of course fictional.
The cars on these two posters are from the LM GT Endurance category and the LM Prototype 1 category respectively. These two classes, like in Super GT, also race together, alongside the LM Prototype 2 class. The "LM" stands for Le Mans, which is home to one of auto racing's most challenging and prestigious endurance races, the Le Mans 24 Hours race. The cars typically are driven by teams of three or four drivers, each taking a turn in the driver's seat (they change who sits during pit service stops). GT Endurance is the slowest of these three classes, being based (loosely) on road-going luxury and/or super sports cars such as the Aston-Martin Vantage or the Chevrolet Corvette. LM Prototype 2 is the middle of the pack group, typically targeted at "privateer" (no "big" manufacturer support) teams, and are cars specifically built just for endurance racing. If you know what a Formula 1 or Indy Car looks like, try imagining that but with bits to cover the wheels and suspension. LM Prototype 1 is the fastest of these three classes, and is basically LMP2 but with MOAR and HYBRID POWAR, and they (now) all have roofs. The races for these cars are long-distance marathon runs, running anywhere from distance-based 300 to 1000 kilometer races, to time-based 3 hour, 6 hour, 12 hour, or even 24 hour races.
Note that the GT racing situation is a little complicated: LM GT Endurance is the category with the most factory support, but GT3 is another wildly popular category. The difference between GTE and GT3 can be broken down to this: In GTE, manufacturers build their cars to a strict set of rules and then bitch (rules waiver requests) when their car isn't quite good enough. In GT3, manufacturers build a race car out of whatever sports car they happen to have on hand at the time, and then, at the beginning of the racing season, the cars are all PVP balanced by the organizing body and the manufacturers just have to deal with it. GT4, a feeder category, is slower than both of these classes, and is basically "take road car, strip off/lighten interior, reinforce chassis/frame, go racing". If you're wondering "if there's GT3, where the hell is GT2 and GT1?", they used to exist but have turned into GTE and killed off due to lack of manufacturer support respectively. Also, because Americans are weird and change the names of goddamn everything, GTE in Europe is called GTLM (in the Tudor United Sports Car Championship) in the US, and GT3 is just GT (in the Pirelli World Challenge series).
Originally Posted by asterism42
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