MOTORSPORT: Le Mans is LE RACE

Every year there are lots of grands prix (a new one this weekend in Baku, Azerbaijan), there's the Indianapolis 500, our Bathurst 1000, the Dakar Rally, and NASCAR's big 'uns, but the race that matters most is the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

What makes this classic so important is that it's essentially about the cars, not the drivers.

It has a real relevance to and big benefits for the car industry.

Much more so than other forms of racing, it is about innovation and improvement for everyday motoring.

Audi has been the dominant manufacturer at Le Mans this century, although Volkswagen group sister brand Porsche is the defending champion and favourite, and in the past decade the four-ringed marque's fuel usage has dropped 46.4 per cent in the two "laps" around the clock at La Sarthe, the 13.6km circuit in France that is two-thirds public country roads.

The rules for this year's race decree that the class one hybrid prototypes from the two German brands and Japan's Toyota use almost another 10 per cent less fuel than last year.

The hybrid technology producing 900-1000 horsepower has been embraced whole-heartedly at Le Mans, whereas in F1 it is barely suffered by many of the participants, even if the majority of the manufacturers involved see positives in it.

Sixty entries were accepted for Le Mans this year – although it looks like being 55 cars by the race start at midnight Saturday, Australian time – in four categories (two for prototype sports cars and two for GTs like those we see in the Bathurst 12-Hour).

While the drivers are overshadowed in the big picture by the makes, there are a couple of great interest to Australians.

Mark Webber is there for the fifth time – twice unhappily and so-nearly-fatally with Mercedes in the late 1990s and now for the third time with Porsche in its comeback after a 16-year hiatus from the event in which it has been the most successful manufacturer.

Two years ago Webber was in a winning position with a couple of hours to go before being forced out. Last year he was second – to another Porsche 919 Hybrid, a wildcard entry that isn't back there this time.

A couple of months away from his 40th birthday, a victory this weekend would top off his career, which has included nine GP wins and last year's World Endurance Championship – Le Mans being the centerpiece of the WEC.

Porsche and Audi have restricted themselves to two LMP1 entries each this year as part of the cost containment within the VW group in the wake of its emissions scandal.

Ryan Briscoe is the other Aussie, in one of Ford's sleek new GTs with 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6s entered on the 50th anniversary of the Blue Oval's breakthrough success over the mighty Ferrari.

That was the start of four years of glory for the American company on what had been the playground of the Europeans.

Briscoe, whose two earlier visits to Le Mans ended little happier than Webber's first two, is partnered by New Zealand's Brisbane-born Indycar star Scott Dixon and Brit Richard Westbrook.

One of Webber's co-drivers, Kiwi Brendon Hartley, will wear a helmet adorned with portrait photos of his countrymen Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon, and colours from their helmets.

That pair piloted Ford's fabulous GT40 to the historic 1966 Le Mans victory. The late McLaren, killed in 1970, and Amon, a sheep farmer who remains revered although otherwise notoriously unlucky, were F1 aces but best known in their era to Australians as champions of the old Tasman Series.

A Kiwi who shared the victorious Porsche at Le Mans last year, Earl Bamber, finds himself in the much slower GTE Pro class in a 911 RSR against the Fords, Ferrari 488s, Aston-Martin, and Corvette C7s.

There already is a huge balance-of-performance controversy in that class, especially about the Fords having been given a 25kg weight reduction in two recent steps.

Ferrari's twin-turbo V8 is the class favourite.

Whatever the outcome, those GTE Pro cars won't be in the hunt for outright honours – although there will be huge interest in them among the likely 275,000 fans at the circuit and the global TV audience.

But the greatest focus inevitably will be on the LMP1 hybrids – Porsche's 919 with its 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol V4, Audi's latest R18 e-tron quattro with 4-litre turbo diesel V6 and Toyota's all-new TS050 with 2.4-litre twin-turbo petrol V6.

All three makes now use battery systems for energy harvesting and deployment after some experimentation with flywheels.

Porsche and Toyota are in the top, eight-megajoule energy recovery class; Audi is in the 6mj class.

The hybrids that finish will cover almost 5.5 times the distance of the Bathurst 1000, averaging around 225km/h and with more than 25,000 gearshifts.

Webber says the pace of Le Mans is now hugely aggressive. "They've raised the bar so high over the last few years that there is no pacing or cruising element to it anymore," he said.

"The car is under extreme pressure for the whole race. Everything is pushed to the limit.

"The sensation of speed is very, very high. I've experienced 350km/h at Monza [in Italy] with the V10 F1 engines [early this century] and it's up there with that – if not slightly ahead, because the electric power, and the torque, is so instant.

"It says: 'I'm just going to keep giving you this brutal horsepower and you have to take it'."

British driver Anthony Davidson, in the Toyota squad, says that driving the hybrids "is more and more like being a jet-fighter pilot, always trying to keep the [ERS] battery in happy equilbrium".

Porsche team principal Andreas Seidl says the LMP1 cars are so complicated there is always the fear of problems.

"You can never be too confident," Seidl said. "A problem can come at any time – not just for us, but for all the manufacturers. It will again be a big challenge to get the cars to the finish."

But Webber is quietly confident of going the distance and finishing first.

"We feel ready," he said. "This is an incredible opportunity to achieve something very special. But we have to make our way through the 24 hours. It is not a race that is easy to execute in terms of operation, as well as traffic, backmarkers – and the weather."