The local impact response and damage of thin composite laminates are investigated. The impact model uses a static contact law which incorporates damage effects due to local contact stresses. A major difference between this contact law and the others used previously is that the damage is accounted for during the loading rather than during the unloading phase which is expected to yield a more reasonable prediction of the maximum impact force. Normalization of the governing differential equations and initial conditions yields a single governing parameter, which is a dimensionless group of all the pertinent impact parameters (i.e., impact velocity, impactor mass, material and geometric properties). The introduction of this parameter not only simplifies the problem but also provides the necessary scaling rules for model testing.