Game Changer: Le Mans 24 Hour

June for the past 100 years has been the month when a wide selection of race cars from some of the world’s most iconic auto brands would spend an entire day battling for supremacy on one of the world’s most challenging race circuits.

The famous Le Mans 24 Hour endurance race celebrated its centenary this year, 10 decades after the first 24 Heures du Mans – as it’s officially known – was held in 1923, using 17km of closed public road alongside the river Sarthe and surrounding the French town of Le Mans.

That first race attracted 33 entries and was won by two Frenchmen in a locally-built Chenard-Walcker. During the years that followed, Bentley would become the dominant brand and decades later would celebrate those victories by naming models after various sections of the Sarthe circuit.

Strikes during the 1930s, followed by World War II, would interrupt racing for a decade. When it returned in 1949, a brief period of French dominance ended and Ferrari would celebrate its first victory in an event which the Italian brand would come to view as its own.

Before the Era of Ferrari though came the Age of Jaguar. From 1951-57, C and D Types crewed by superstar drivers including the legendary Stirling Moss would win five times and set a new standard of professionalism for the event.

Ferrari then became dominant, winning seven out of eight events from 1958-65. As movie-goers might know, that reign ended in 1966 when Ford’s GT40 secured the first of its four Le Mans trophies.

Porsche then appeared in the winner’s circle with its fearsome and incredibly fast 917. These cars with futuristic bodywork and 12-cylinder turbocharged engines changed Le Mans forever, averaging more than 250km/h and setting a 1971 qualifying time that would not be bettered until 1985.

Porsche remained unbeatable for most of the 1980s, before Jaguar took its first wins in 30 years. They came in 1988 and 1990, separated by the F1 Sauber team’s only victory and followed in 1991 by Mazda’s pioneering win by a Japanese brand.

Audi had for years enjoyed rally and saloon race success and showed little interest in sports car racing. That changed in 2000 when a team of R8s with Le Mans specialist Tom Kristensen as lead driver took the first of three consecutive Audi victories.

Bentley won in 2003 – its first trophy since 1930 – before Audi returned and remained virtually unstoppable until 2014.

By then, petrol and turbo-diesel engines had been replaced by hybrid power units and Porsche was back in contention. Its 919 won three times before Toyota asserted its developmental might and recorded an unbroken record of five consecutive victories (2018-22).

In 2023 and 50 years after its last outright win, a prototype Ferrari 499P gave the brand its 10th victory.

Although the actual 100th running of the 24-hour race is still some years away, the centenary of the original 1923 event was seen as significant and marked by 10 days of celebrations and special events.

Over June 1-11 this year, more than 60 winners of previous races were on display or lapping the circuit, sometimes with victorious drivers at the wheel.

Le Mans is today very different than it had been in 1970 and before. No longer do drivers sprint across the track, leap aboard their cars and hope they start.

Today, when the field in its various classes approaches the start line, participants are at 100km/h and under the control of a safety car before being released into a full day of high-speed combat.

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