Complete Guide to Le Mans 24: The Most Intense Race in the World of Motorsport
This year's Le Mans 24 Hours promises to be one of the most compelling editions of the race for some time.
With no obvious pre-race favourite for the win, the 13-14 June event is set to be a three-way tussle between the reigning world champions, the most successful endurance outfit of recent times and the most successful manufacturer of all time at the Circuit de la Sarthe.
It is a tantalising prospect and one that highlights the resurgence of sports car racing, which after a lull is currently enjoying its latest golden period.
With a high-quality field featuring stunning cars and household names in the cockpit, endurance racing is fashionable once more, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, motorsport's equivalent of the Glastonbury music festival, has been gifted a new lease of life.
Ahead of the 83rd running of the world's most famous endurance race, here's our complete preview to the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours, with a look at the race's history and heritage, its format, the Circuit de la Sarthe track and the contenders for victory.
Heritage and Importance
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Along with the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans makes up the holy Triple Crown of Motorsport.
In simpler terms, it is one of the very few events in the world that every racing driver—young or old, amateur or professional—wants to, first, participate in and, of course, win.
There is a certain majesty and romance about Le Mans that is not replicated at any other motor-racing event in the world, including Monaco, Indy and other 24-hour races at the Nurburgring and the Daytona International Speedway.
From drivers running to their cars from the opposite side of the pit straight to officially mark the start of the race—as was standard practice until 1970—to the field crossing the finish line in formation 24 hours later, Le Mans is a truly unique race.
If you were to strip away the emotion of the event, though, Le Mans, is merely the third of eight rounds in the World Endurance Championship, a series launched as recently as 2012.
It is, however, a crucial point of the season, with double-points awarded "all the way down the finishing order in each of the four classes," according to the WEC's official website, meaning the winners will receive 50 points, a potentially crucial advantage in the title race.
There was much uproar in Formula One when double-points were awarded in the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but you'd struggle to find even a raised eyebrow in the WEC.
After all, anyone who conquers Le Mans deserves a bonus prize.
The Event
2 of 9Le Mans is renowned for being the most famous 24-hour motor race in the world, but the event itself actually begins weeks, if not a month, in advance.
"Le Mans season" begins at the second round of the WEC, a six-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps, the home of Formula One's Belgian Grand Prix.
With a similar circuit layout to the Circuit de la Sarthe—fast, flowing corners, long, kinked straights, elevation changes—Spa offers a decent initial indication of who will be competitive at Le Mans.
That indication becomes a whole lot clearer at a test day at Le Mans, which is normally held a fortnight ahead of the big day.
Despite no cars taking to the track until the Wednesday, the race week itself is a relentless affair as the cars are scrutineered in Le Mans town centre, above, giving the drivers a chance to mingle with spectators in one of the most fulfilling days on the motor-racing calendar.
There is a solitary (albeit four-hour long) practice session on Wednesday afternoon before the first of three two-hour qualifying sessions begin that night. Pole position is decided across the final two sessions on Thursday evening, with drivers returning to the town centre on Friday to bask in the atmosphere of the drivers' parade.
Warm-up sessions are a thing of the past in modern motorsport, but Le Mans has remained true to its history by allocating 45 minutes on Saturday morning to let drivers and teams loosen up before the wait finally ends that afternoon.
Never let it be said that Le Mans is just a 24-hour race.
Track Specification, Distance, Speed Record
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The Le Mans 24 Hours is held at the legendary Circuit de la Sarthe, one of the most challenging yet thrilling and rewarding venues in motorsport.
A mixture of public roads and a purpose-built racetrack, it has been subject to several modifications over the years and is currently 13.6 kilometres (the equivalent of 8.4 miles) long.
For the quickest cars in the field, a single lap of the semi-permanent circuit takes around three-and-a-half minutes to complete, whereas the slowest machines can still produce times in the region of four minutes.
Despite being defined by a long back stretch, which is fragmented by two chicanes, the track still contains 38 turns, although the exact number depends on whether you regard curved straights as corners in their own right.
According to three-time winner Allan McNish in a 2011 Audi promotional video, Le Mans sees cars complete "the equivalent of an entire Formula One season in one day," with the last five race-winners recording anything between 348 and 397 laps en route to the chequered flag.
The record distance was set in the 2010 event, when the field completed a covered a combined total of 3,362.06 miles.
The fastest-ever speed at Le Mans was clocked by Roger Dorchy in the 1988 race, who achieved a velocity of 405 kilometres per hour (251.6 miles per hour) behind the wheel of the "twin-turbo V6-powered" P87 car of Peugeot. The manufacturer had specifically targeted that record, according to Motor Sport Magazine.
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Track Guide
4 of 9A lap of the Circuit de la Sarthe track begins with a trip down what is a relatively short pit straight before the cars swerve to negotiate a right-handed kink, which is normally taken flat-out by the front-runners.
Drivers, however, must take care to stabilise the rear before punching the brakes for the first time to avoid locking up on the approach to an uphill, left-right chicane.
The low kerbs mean drivers are already firmly on the throttle pedal before they clip the second apex, after which they straighten the car to approach the first truly iconic section of the lap.
Under the famous bridge, the cars descend through the Dunlop Curve, refraining from hugging the inside line to utilise the entry into the Esses, where a right-handed turn slings them into a banked left-hander, the exit of which throws them right again, unsettling the rear end.
With only the briefest moment to catch their breath, the drivers are dabbing the brakes again to negotiate Tetre Rouge—which narrows on the exit, almost as if it's trying to spit the cars off the road—before they're propelled into the wilderness of the Mulsanne Straight.
Lined by trees, the road markings become an animation as the brute force of the cars is unleashed down this everlasting stretch of harmonic loneliness as the drivers leave the grandstands behind and become one with their machines.
That intimacy is rudely interrupted by two bumpy chicanes, the right-left First Chicane and further down the road, the left-right Second Chicane, which is abruptly followed by the Mulsanne Kink.
The road straightens once again prior to the most challenging braking zone on the lap, Mulsanne Corner, which sees drivers stamp hard with their left foot in the middle of a right-handed kink.
The second-gear turn is the scariest of optical illusions as the apex arrives faster than one can comprehend, but more often than not the front-end digs into the corner just in time and the trip back to the pits begins.
The track narrows and the trees smother down the long back stretch—where, according to Alex Wurz in a Toyota YouTube video, the cars can reach maximum speed at night due to the effect the oxygen levels have on the engine—before cars ease through a kink and brake for the banked left-hander of Indianapolis.
Wurz says Arnage, the following right-hander, is the slowest on the track and taken in just first gear, yet it is among the most crucial, with a clean exit vital in ensuring strong speed on yet another long, kinked straight ahead of the most difficult section of the track, the Porsche Curves.
Left, right, left, left, right, left is the sequence as the cars dive from apex to apex, springing through this spectacular sequence before the turns lose their intensity, straightening up and offering drivers sympathy.
At this point, the iconic Ferris wheel and pit building come into sight and, for drivers, it must be tempting to exploit track limits and rush to the timing line, yet the formality that is the two left-right, flowing Ford Chicanes must be completed before the fun starts all over again.
It is a motorsport cliche that a racetrack is a living thing, but the Circuit de la Sarthe is the one place where that sentiment rings true.
Most Successful Drivers, Manufacturers
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Tom Kristensen is the most successful driver in Le Mans history, winning the race nine times in total, including six consecutive victories between 2000 and 2005.
The Dane, Mr Le Mans himself, is comfortably out in front in the all-time list of winners, with Jacky Ickx, who also won the race in three separate decades between the 1960s and '80s, the second most frequent victor at the Circuit de la Sarthe with six wins.
Behind the Belgian lies Britain's Derek Bell, Germany's Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro, of Italy, who are all tied on five wins.
As for the manufacturers, it is Porsche and Audi, two brands of the Volkswagen Group, who have enjoyed the most triumphs at Le Mans.
Porsche's successes are very much historical, with the outfit winning 16 races between the early '70s and late '90s—including seven in a row in the 1980s—while Audi have secured each of their 13 wins in this millennium alone, losing out to Bentley in 2003 and Peugeot in 2009.
This period of unflinching dominance at Le Mans would suggest Audi have been unchallenged for much of the last 15 years, but the German marque have been pushed hard—very hard—by not only Bentley and Peugeot, but Toyota and the modern Porsche outfit.
Rather, the longstanding success of Audi, Porsche, Kristensen and Ickx confirm that experience and nous are of paramount importance at Le Mans, where success breeds success.
Weather Forecast
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Such is the sheer length of the Circuit de la Sarthe that the weather can play an instrumental role in deciding the outcome of the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Quite often, one section of the circuit can be drenched with rain while the remainder of the track could be virtually bone-dry, which can leave teams with potentially decisive strategy dilemmas.
If, for instance, rain is falling with increasing intensity at Mulsanne Corner yet is nowhere to be seen at the Dunlop Curve, would you play it safe by pitting for wet tyres or stay out on track and literally weather the storm, hoping the shower will pass?
It is this kind of mid-race puzzle that makes Le Mans so thoroughly absorbing, and an incorrect decision can prove extremely costly at a venue where it can take a painful amount of time for cars to crawl back to the pits for teams to right their wrongs.
With The Weather Channel, at the time of writing, predicting pleasant conditions on Saturday but rain on Sunday, we could be in for a race of two halves.
Should that forecast prove correct, the teams' strategists will earn their money this weekend.
The Cars
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There is plenty of variety on the Le Mans grid, with the 56 cars coming in several shapes and sizes.
At the front of the pack lies futuristic-looking prototypes, the vast majority of which are fielded by the big-name companies. Those manufacturers are compelled to run with energy-retrieval systems—sound familiar?—which not only give the cars a substantial power boost but inject a tinge of green to the 24-hour motor race.
The internal combustion engines of these cars produce 500 brake horsepower, with the effect of the hybrid systems pushing that over the 1,000 mark.
The other end of the Le Mans spectrum is taken up by GT cars, which despite looking like regular sports cars and being no match for the leading machines still pack a considerable punch.
In the middle of the pack lies a bunch of cars run by privateer outfits, which look relatively similar to the leading prototypes but produce less than half the power of the front-runners.
Le Mans' commitment to showcasing new, innovative technology resulted in the birth of the Garage 56 scheme in 2012, which has housed the quirkiest of designs such as the Nissan DeltaWing.
Garage 56 will be empty in 2015, but Nissan will take to the track with another striking design, the front-engined GT-R LM Nismo, which will make its long-awaited racing debut at Le Mans after missing the first two rounds of the WEC campaign.
Although the reliability of the cars has improved in recent years—the 2013 event witnessed the most finishers in Le Mans history, with 42 reaching the chequered flag—Le Mans is so gruelling that every team will enter the race expecting to lose time (and laps) to technical troubles and repairs.
The Classes
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Considering the difference in performance between the cars, it would be ludicrous if every competitor were to fight for the same prize, which is why the Le Mans 24 Hours is split into four separate classes.
This effectively creates four mini-races within a race, meaning there is no shortage of action and always a position worth fighting for across the 24 hours.
Sitting at the top of the class, of course, are the blisteringly quick prototypes, which make up the 14-car LMP1 category. The victors of this group will be remembered as the winners of Le Mans, their place in the race's history assured.
The next category, LMP2, can sometimes be innocently overlooked, but this is the most densely populated class in the entire field, with no fewer than 19 cars fighting for the spoils.
Meanwhile, the GT class, featuring modified road cars, is split in two: GTE Pro and GTE AM.
The former, as its name suggests, is reserved for professional teams and drivers, while the latter is mostly made up of amateur drivers, with only one professional driver per car.
The top-three in each class are invited to the Monza-style podium when the chequered flag falls on Sunday in an extended and very busy ceremony.
With so many cars fighting in different categories, however, traffic—even on a track as long as the Circuit de la Sarthe—can be a major issue at Le Mans, and it is not uncommon to see the LMP1s tripping over the lesser machines.
Just ask Allan McNish, whose 2011 race ended with a crash at Dunlop Curve, and Anthony Davidson, who was punted into the air on the approach to Mulsanne Corner the following year.
The Contenders
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From former Formula One race winners such as Mark Webber to a Hollywood icon in Patrick Dempsey, 168 drivers are scheduled to participate in the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours.
But only a fraction of those—24, funnily enough—will be in contention for overall victory, and each of them represent the three current heavyweights currently in endurance racing, Toyota, Audi and Porsche.
Toyota are the reigning World Endurance Champions having won the title with former F1 drivers Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi in 2014, yet The Big One has eluded them since their return to sports cars three years ago.
With Kazuki Nakajima alongside the two world champions and with Alexander Wurz, Stephane Sarrazin and Mike Conway in the team's second car, the Japanese manufacturer will be hoping to finally reach the top step of the podium in 2015.
Despite lacking a big-name driver lineup since the retirements of Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen, Audi have continued to get the job done in recent years.
Central to that success has been the partnership between Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler and Benoit Treluyer, who together have won Le Mans in three of the last four years. The trio also have the momentum heading into this year's race, having won both previous rounds of the WEC season at Silverstone and Spa, surprising with their speed.
Running three cars, Audi have the ability to gang up on Toyota at the Circuit de la Sarthe, with Lucas di Grassi, Loic Duval and Oliver Jarvis sharing one R18 e-tron quattro and Filipe Albuquerque, Marco Bonanomi and Rene Rast sharing the other.
Also fielding a three-car effort are Porsche, who partner Webber with Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley. Meanwhile, Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas will unite behind the wheel of the second 919 Hybrid, with Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber joined by Force India F1 star Nico Hulkenberg in the third.
One of these lineups will be the class of an enormous field on Sunday, and you can find a full entry list on the Le Mans 24 Hours' official website.
May the best team win.
All facts and statistics used in this article, unless stated, have been taken from Autosport magazine's "Le Mans 2015" supplement, the Le Mans 24 Hours' official website and Wikipedia.
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