Car Racing and Sports Cars

24 Hours of Le Mans

The ultimate race in the category of endurance racing proves to be the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This is also the oldest sports' car endurance race. Held every year close to the French town of Le Mans from 1923, this is referred to as the Endurance Grand Prix race. The circuit it runs on involves public roads that are closed and meant to test the cars' and drivers' capabilities of lasting over less than optimal driving conditions for an extended period of time.


24 Hours of Le Mans Race Overview

In the early days of racing, when the Grand Prix was first being held around Europe, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, or ACO, creators of Le Mans came up with a different vision for a motor sports test and race. Rather than concentrate on a car maker's capability of creating the fastest car of its day, the 24 Hours Le Mans instead was intended to focus on a car manufacturer's ability to construct sporty cars that were similarly reliable. The goal lay in pushing innovation not only in reliability, but similarly in fuel efficiency. This was because it was believed that the inherent nature of endurance racing requires cars that will run with minimal and infrequent stops in the pits.

The other hope was to encourage drives made for greater stability and aerodynamics at higher rates of speed. It was thought that the Le Mans course design would promote this. Because some of the roads raced on are public roads, not typically kept up to the same exacting standards as are permanent race tracks, greater amounts of strain are placed on the cars' parts. This leads to a greater focus on car reliability, and not simply on speed.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans typically consists of around fifty racing teams. All of the cars must feature not less than two seats. A maximum of two doors are permitted on the cars.

Even though all of the racing cars compete against each other at the exact time, different classes exist. Class prizes are awarded, as well as an overall award winner at the event's conclusion. There have been variations in the classes over the race' history, but presently there are four of them. The first and top two classes today are LMP's, or Le Mans Prototypes, built custom for the race. The other two classes are GT, or grand tourer, classes that are based on cars currently in production. Even though winners commonly are derived from the top class in the event, entrants from lower classes sometimes win because of superior reliability.


24 Hours of Le Mans History

May 26-27 of 1923 saw the first running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. In the early days, winners of the overall race were decided based on whose car and driver managed to cover the greatest distance by the end of the twenty-four hours. These first races were mostly won by British, French, and Italian drivers and cars. The early dominant names in the race were Bentley, Bugatti, and Alfa Romeo. After sixteen exciting years of innovation, the race had to be canceled in 1939 due to the outbreak of World War II.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans race would not return for ten long years. In 1949, the circuits' roads and facilities were rebuilt. The car maker majors showed a renewed interest in competing again. By 1953, the World Sportscar Championship was created, and Le Mans was a key part of it. Aston Martin, Ferrari, Jaguar, and Mercedes, along with numerous other manufacturers, began dispatching multiple car and driver entries to compete against their rivals. These years saw the first tragic accident when in 1955, Pierre Levegh's car hurtled into a crowded audience and killed in excess of eighty people. As a result of this terrible accident, the widespread adoption of new stricter safety measures was mandated in all of the world of motor sports. The first American string of victories happened in the end of the 1960's when Ford's GT40's captured four successive victories.

In the 1970's, 24 Hours of Le Mans geared more for extreme auto designs and speeds. The era of production built sports cars as the dominant force in the race had come to an end, with purposely built sports cars taking most of the victories going forward, Throughout this decade, the Porsche 917, 935, and 936 cars were dominant. A renewed effort from French car makers Renault and Matra-Simca gave France its first national title since 1950 when a Renault car won. In these years, two independents won the race for the only times in its history, a Mirage in the 1975 race and Jean Rondeau's self titled car in the 1980 race.

The 1980's races were remembered for the fact that Porsche was the dominant winner with its Group C race car that demonstrated fuel efficiency. Mercedes and Jaguar both reentered sports car racing then too, with Jaguar managing to breaks Porsche's long winning streak by triumphing in both 1988 and 1990, and Mercedes winning in 1989. A new speed record of 253 mph, or 406 km/h, was set that same year by the Peugeot, which won in 1992 and 1993. Mazda was the only Japanese car maker of the time to win when it took the trophy in 1991.

In the 1990's, the World Sportscar Championship met an untimely end, but 24 Hours of Le Mans kept going strong. Production based grand tourer cars had a last resurgence in this decade. The year 1995 saw the entry and victory of race latecomer McLaren. BMW won its first victory in the history of the race in 1999. In this decade, the ACO organizers of the event permitted the Le Mans name to be used in a sports car race series in the U.S. beginning in 1999. This was called the American Le Mans Series. It still competes today and qualifies teams to enter the French headquartered 24 Hours of Le Mans race.

Beginning in the year 2000, a great number of the major car manufacturers chose to withdraw from the high flying world of sports car racing because of the extreme costs of participating in the annual event. By 2005, only Chrystler, Panoz, and MG were left to compete with Audi and Bentley. Bentley had returned to the race in 2001 and triumphed in 2003.

Since 2006, an emphasis on cars that feature alternative energy sources has emerged. Audi introduced a new diesel engine powered prototype the R10 TDI at the conclusion of 2005. This was the first diesel car to win the Le Mans. Peugeot similarly followed Audi's leadership and entered diesel cars in 2007 with the 908 model. The subsequent 2008 race showcased the intense competition between the Peugeot 908 and the Audi R10. The Audi finally triumphed in a margin of just under ten minutes. Peugeot received satisfaction in 2009, their first such victory since 1993. This is also the era in which the ACO launched a European version of the American Le Mans Series, which was called the Le Mans Series. They launched one for Asia in 2006 with the Japan Le Mans Challenge. As of 2008, Porsche still proved to be the most winning car manufacturer, having captured sixteen total victories and a record seven wins consecutively.


Track Information

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is actually run on the Circuit de la Sarthe. The track is comprised of public roads that are closed for the race, along with some permanent race tracks. The present form of the track is 13.65 kilometers long. For safety of the audience purposes, the race no longer enters Le Mans. To keep speeds run from exceeding four hundred kilometers per hour, the ACO was forced to eliminate any straightaway that was greater in length than 2 kilometers. To this effect, the track had two chicanes added in the sections that had been five continuous kilometers straight previously.

Public track sections are not so well maintained or smooth as the private tracks are. They do not feature the road grip that the private track sections do either. This only impacts the first couple of laps of the race, since the Bugatti Circuit comprises much of the rest of the track, along with other permanent circuits.


Historic and Recent Winners

Two drivers hold records for their total number of victories in the 24 Hours of Le Mans races. Jacky Ickx had the original record for most wins with six that he gained between the years of 1969 and 1982. Dane Tom Kristensen overturned his victory record subsequently with eight victories from 1997 to 2008, with six consecutive wins. The most recent winners were Germany's Mike Rockenfeller and Tmo Bernhard and France's Romain Dumas.