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.
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…
