Le Mans 24 Hours
Its the most gruelling a strenuous endurance race in the world. Its famous track has lead to the lives of 21 drivers and 82 spectators being claimed. It is the 24 heures du man on the Circuit de la Sarthe the Le man 24 hours.
Beginning in 1923 near the town of the Le Mans in the north of France this race was unlike any other at the time and continues to be so to this day. Consisting of mostly public roads that are closed for the weekend event and lasting for a full 24 hours this race tests drivers and cars to their limits and often beyond.
The racing is divided into 4 classes. Theres the custom built prototypes LMP1 and LMP2 depending on the cars speed weight and power output. With low ground clearance and extremely powerful engines built on light chassis resulting in top speeds over 210 mph and the grand tourer classes GT1 and GT2 these cars are very similar to their production line counterparts except all non essential parts have been gutted from the cars and the engines have had the maximum amount of power squeezed out of them. All the competitors in all 4 classes are on the track at the same time and prizes are given out to winners of their classes and for the overall winner.
The racers used to start by having their cars all lined up on the grid and when the flag dropped they had to run from the pit wall start their engine and drive off but this was later banned as many drivers wouldnt bother to strap in their safety harnesses to save time. Recently cars start with a rolling start as in Indianapolis with their position being decided by qualifying laps earlier in the racing week.
Originally there were no rules on the number of drivers in a car or how long they can drive. Although almost all teams used two drivers in the early years of the race some Le Mans drivers like Frenchman Pierre Levegh attempted to run the race themselves hoping to save time by not having to change drivers although this was later banned. For safety reasons as reaction times steadily drop after long periods of driving. Up until the 1980s there were teams where only two drivers competed but by the end of the decade the rules were changed stating that all teams had to have three drivers. By the 1990s due to the speeds of the cars and the strain it put on drivers further rules were put in place in order to aid in driver safety. Drivers could not drive more than four hours consecutively and no one driver could run for more than fourteen hours in total.
The Le Mans race may seem like an extremely challenging and dangerous race even with all the safety restrictions when compared to other races in motor sport but it has helped changed the automotive world. Beginning in the late 1970s the necessity of fuel economy led the race to adopt a fuel economy formula known as Group C in which competitors were given a set amount of fuel from which they had to design an engine. Although once teams mastered the fuel formulas Group C was abandoned fuel economy would remain to be very important to some teams as alternative fuel sources would appear in the early 21st century attempting to overcome time spent during pit stops.
These technological innovations have had a trickledown effect with technology used at Le Mans finding its way into production cars several years later. This has also led to faster and more exotic supercars due to manufacturers wishing to develop faster road cars for the purposes of developing them into even faster GT cars. Even before the 70s technological innovations were laying down the way for our future cars with supercharged engines being used as 1929 and in 1953 disc brakes were used for the first time ever as seen on a Jaguar Ctype. In 1955 Mercedes introduced the air brake on a car for the first time on their 300 SLR this later trickled down to their incredibly powerful supercar the 2003 model.
This incredible race is a great spectacle where something always happens a blow out a fire a car flips and a great driver claims victory and will continue its great tradition next year June 13th and 14th 2009.
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