Le Mans 24 Hours – Race
Live Text
Hello, bonjour and bienvenue to Motorsport.com’s live coverage of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and we’re not long away now from the start of the twice-around-the-clock French sportscar classic.
It’s round three of the FIA World Endurance Championship, and double points are on offer for all regular competitors.
The challenge they face is generally regarded as the world’s greatest sportscar circuit: 13.629km or 8.469 miles of Circuit de la Sarthe.
We’ve had some fantastic action already this week, not least in practice and qualifying. Read our in-depth qualifying report here.
Here’s a video we never tire of looking at: Jani’s pole lap from 2015 – which is the fastest-ever around this version of the track.
Since qualifying ended, seven cars have been thrown to the back of the grid for the start.
Get well soon, Cooper MacNeil.
Here’s the highlights from the qualifying session that mattered, which started with a dramatic blaze for the ByKolles CLM…
We’ve already had some race action, with the ‘Road to Le Mans’ event – here’s our report on that.
Thankfully the rain held off yesterday, as there was some great fun to be had in the heart of the city of Le Mans, as the Drivers’ Parade took the race to the people. Here’s James Allen’s report on what transpired…
One of the major storylines over the next 24 hours is how Ford fares on its return as a factory force. Here’s James Allen again, to put it into historical context…
Here’s another great video, Chris Amon’s views on that 1966 race… What a superb driver he was.
…and then Larry Holt of Multimatic – who designed the Ford GTE car – hit back and blamed Corvette for not trying hard enough!
Let’s have a word with FIA World Endurance Championship chief Gerard Neveu ahead of the race, he was speaking to James Allen this morning.
As Gerard says, there’s a lot of “English weather” about (it never normally rains in France, of course!) and that could set the cat among the pigeons in the intense fight for LMP2 honours today. Here’s Sam Smith’s take on what we can expect in this class.
We’ve already had track action today, of course, in the warm-up session. Here’s our report on that.
One aspect of today that has to go perfectly – especially in dodgy weather conditions – is pitstops. Alex Wurz joins our team this weekend, and talks us through how Toyota goes about its business…
You want some starting drivers, don't you?
Here's the LMP1 starters: Jani, Bernhard, Conway, Buemi, Lotterer, Duval, Imperatori, Heidfeld, Kaffer.
In LMP2 it's: Rast, Panciatici, Lapierre, Merhi, Vanthoor, Derani.
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