Le Mans 2026 Part 2

Further to my last post of reflections on the 2026 Le Mans 24-hour race, I wanted to follow up on another theme – a sort of “how did we get here?” kind of thought.

Call it ‘convergence’ if you want, and – like Balance of Performance and close racing – you may think it is a good thing, but there is something about the homogeneity of Le Mans these days that makes me yearn (again) for days gone by.

Today, ‘Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans’ is the blue riband event of the World Endurance Championship, and sportscar fans who follow the championship will no doubt stay on top of the races that comprise that championship, as it treks across the continents of Europe, South and North America and the Middle East.

But there is a sizeable chunk of the Le Mans audience (both on-site spectators and TV viewers around the world) who care not a hoot for the WEC, and who are only interested in the 24-hour race at La Sarthe each June.

Although it has often been part of a championship, the ACO – the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, the organisers of the 24 hours – always seemed to maintain a fierce independence from the World governing body, whether that was the CSI or the FIA. Over the years, the ACO wanted to maintain the traditions and heritage of their race, which often led to unpleasant and irreconcilable political arguments.

In Europe, sportscar racing reached a crisis in the early 1990’s, due in no small part to Bernie Ecclestone’s pushing Group C to adopt 3.5-litre F1-style engines and hence, ultimately to the extinction of the category. The rest of the century saw the ACO being as creative as possible, while suffering various politically-driven demands from the FIA – to insert chicanes on the Mulsanne straight, rebuild the pit garages, etc. – in order to maintain the 24 hours as the top endurance race in the world. The promises that the FIA made in return were never kept.

Meanwhile, in America, through the 2000’s, there were two distinct avenues of sportscar racing. There was the Grand-Am series, administered by NASCAR, which included the 24 hours of Daytona on its calendar, and a separate series, initiated by Don Panoz, and run by IMSA, called the American Le Mans Series, whose big event was the Sebring 12 hours, usually held about a month later. The two championships were very different affairs, the cars were dissimilar, and there was little overlap between the two. For fans of endurance racing, Grand-Am was seen as being America-centric, whereas the ALMS had a more European flavour. But why the need for two series? There was none, and in 2012, common sense prevailed and Grand-Am merged with IMSA. Thus, in 2014 IMSA created the United SportsCar Championship, which remains to this day, now with the support and sponsorship of WeatherTech.

I mention this, because it is important background to the desire from across the Atlantic for a single worldwide ruleset for sportscars – specifically prototypes.

Back in Europe, the irreversible (and in my view, fatal) step came in 2012, when the FIA and the ACO joined forces to launch the FIA WEC. This combined the ACO’s sporting rules and Le Mans heritage (for the 24 hours) with the sanctioning power and world championship status of the FIA. It was a marriage of convenience, but a union with relatively short-term objectives. Inevitably, one partner would emerge as the dominant force, and that was never going to be the ACO. Le Mans would henceforth become subservient to the whims of the FIA. The authority of the FIA led to increased involvement of manufacturers in the decision-making process and rule definition, and a clear desire for a single platform for prototypes to be able to race in series on both sides of the Atlantic emerged.

Through the 2010’s Le Mans Prototypes (LMP1) became increasingly fast, technologically complex and expensive. By the end of the decade the FIA had convinced sufficient numbers of manufacturers to become involved in the so-called Le Mans Hypercar class (LMH). It was, if you will, the child of the marriage of the FIA and the ACO. Except that there was a third partner, IMSA, which begat LMDh, Le Mans Daytona. What was the “h” for? No-one ever really knew. Hybrid? Hypercar? Hubris?

Am I being curmudgeonly to complain? Since Hypercar was introduced in 2021, we have moved from five entries representing three manufacturers to eighteen entries representing eight manufacturers. Since 2022, there has always been at least one car on the same lap as the leader – something that only happened twice in the previous dozen years. This year, there were 48 changes of leader and four different cars that held the lead at various points during the 24 hours. According to Al Kamel (who have been the official timekeepers since the FIA/ACO launched the WEC), there were 29,446 overtakes during this year’s race. I’m not suggesting that it’s not entertaining to watch. Like any good TV drama series, Le Mans grabs your attention and keeps it as long as it can.

Now we have the news that for 2030 onwards, LMH and LMDh will be combined into a single LMH category. Except that there are two ‘pathways’, which look (to me) a lot like the previous two ‘platforms’. It surely is a compromise reached from interminable committee meetings. If it keeps manufacturers as disparate as those that competed at Le Mans this year involved, then great. But does it stir the soul in quite the same way as in former times? I’m not so sure.

As I drove home from Le Mans this year, I was overtaken by English-registered Ferraris, Porsches, Aston Martins and Lamborghinis. I did wonder whether the Toyota Corolla drivers were puffing out their chests with a sense of pride, because “their car won Le Mans”. I suppose the same marketing drive was apparent in the 1960’s, when Ford strove to beat Ferrari. I know which brand I would rather drive, regardless of who wins an artificially-manipulated handicap race in France – even if it is the best race of the year…

Le Mans 2026 - Part One: the new era.

I thoroughly enjoyed being at Le Mans for the 24 hours again this year. I geared myself up by writing a preview article for Racecar Engineering, and then I described the Test Day sessions with Jonny Palmer for Radio Le Mans on the Sunday before the race. This is always something of a challenge as Jonny is in a studio in London, and I am in my office at home. Listen carefully and you might hear pigeons and seagulls in the background. Although Jonny then travelled to Le Mans the following day, it wasn’t possible for me to make the trip until the Thursday, by which time the first official qualifying session had already taken place. Apart from the Covid-affected years in 2020 and 2021, this was the first official qualifying session at Le Mans at which I had not been present since 1982.

Still, I managed to get myself settled in and spent Thursday afternoon setting up ‘my’ corner of our broadcast studio. The various ‘Hyperpole’ sessions to determine the grid positions took place on Thursday evening to the usual fanfare, and I was pleased to see the entire driving crews of the successful teams in each class being celebrated this year. The razzmatazz was followed by one-hour of Free Practice, which was my first scheduled session on air, from 11pm until midnight.

Every year sees changes here and there, and yet much remains the same. Facilities have improved, for spectators, teams, media and for those who are following the race at home (of which there seem to be ever more). The official attendance figure was published as 350,105 – counting all the people on site, not just spectators. Given that every pass has to be scanned by an official, there’s no reason to doubt the accuracy of that number. But does the person holding the scanner need to scan their pass? I’m never sure. Who checks the checkers?

Bar code scanning of passes is a relatively new innovation, of course. It was introduced in 2007, and everyone had to have their passes scanned on the way in and out of the circuit. I remember queuing for ages trying to get out of the circuit in the early hours of Friday morning following Thursday’s night qualifying session, when all I really wanted was my bed!

These days the process works more efficiently, and hopefully addresses the problem of fraudulent folk trying to beat the system. Does anyone remember the days of having to collect a ‘pass-out’ ticket as you left one spectator zone and headed to another?

It is, I believe, part of human nature to look back fondly on the past, and sometimes in so doing, we overlook what is good about the present. We are repeatedly told these days that the current ‘Hypercar era’ represents a golden period for world championship sportscar racing, and I wouldn’t disagree. The presence of eight manufacturers on the grid in the top class of the entry is very welcome, but not unique. In 1999 there were ten, and back in 1955 there were twelve manufacturers entered in the 3- and 5-litre engined classes, most of which could have been regarded as potential winners. Unfortunately, 1955 is remembered more for its tragedy, but going into the race, sportscar racing had reached something of a zenith. Did you know that in addition to Ferrari and Maserati (Italy), Mercedes (Germany), Peugeot, Gordini, Talbot and Panhard (France), Cunningham (USA) there were twelve British car manufacturers represented on the grid in 1955? No prizes for naming them, but if you want to put them in a comment, I promise I’ll reply. Interestingly, in 1955, none of the 58 cars that started the race had a roof. In 2026, of course, all of them did.

There are two things that particularly distinguish the current era, in my opinion. The first is the closeness of the leading Hypercars. The second is the reliability.

The table below shows the average of the best 20% of laps completed by the best of each Hypercar manufacturer.

Race - Average of best 20% of laps

Car	Average Lap Time	Delta to mean
Toytoa	3m 27.030s	-0.47%
Cadillac	3m 27.088s	-0.44%
BMW	3m 27.318s	-0.33%
Ferrari	3m 27.918s	-0.04%
Alpine	3m 28.042s	0.02%
Genesis	3m 28.377s	0.18%
Aston Martin	3m 28.390s	0.18%
Peugeot	3m 29.883s	0.90%

To put these numbers into context, at the outset of the Hypercar era, the aim of the FIA/ACO Balance of Performance was to put everyone within 2%. One cannot argue that the performance windows within which the cars must now operate are indeed very well-matched indeed. If it weren’t for Peugeot, (which was horribly disappointing) skewing the average, the numbers would be even closer. But for me (and for many to whom I have spoken), this is not truly in the spirit of Le Mans. Historically, the race has brought together cars with different strengths – some with better speed, some with better performance in the wet, better fuel economy, better reliability, and so on. Often, this would mean a runaway winner, or a fast car embarking on a fruitless chase, and rarely, I’ll admit, a close finish. But does a close finish mean a good race?

Since Hypercar, the cars are all super-reliable, built to withstand being driven over kerbs, bouncing with seeming impunity through gravel traps, off barriers or other cars, and with everything electronically controlled, making survival the rule rather than the exception. In the six years that it has been in operation, there have been just 15 Hypercar retirements, out of 87 entries – an attrition rate of just over 17%. The last time that fewer than 40 cars were still running after 24 hours was more than a decade ago, in 2015. In the 1980s and 1990s, when I first was attending the race, the most cars that ever finished was 30, in 1993.

Then there are the Safety Car interruptions, which will always – these days – bunch up the field. Whether you’ve had a spin, a stop-and-go penalty or an extra pit stop; provided you stay on the lead lap, a Safety Car will bring you back into contention. This is probably just as well, really, since the Balance of Performance ensures that you can’t catch up any other way.

I don’t deny that all this makes for great television. And it doesn’t really matter if you tune in for the first hour or two, or for a few hours in the middle of the night, or for the last part of the race – you’re practically guaranteed to see some close battles going on. Yet I look back fondly on those days when the spectator enclosure opposite the pits would slowly fill from Sunday lunchtime, maybe a couple of dozen (if you were lucky) cars still circulating, many carrying the wounds of the battle, a few being driven close to their limit – and raising cheers from the crowd – most separated by several laps, but all dedicated to getting to the end of the race. It may not have been action-packed, but it did contain emotion, significance and was important, somehow.