Category: Le Mans

And now Porsche will also be back to La Sarthe!!!

Only in 2023, but then we will have a Porsche LMDh (Le Mans Daytona hybrid) car! I read the news on Jalopnik this afternoon, when they posted a link to Porsche’s Twitter page. According to both sources, Porsche will indeed be back to La Sarthe, with a brand new 1000 kg hybrid car with around 680 hp of power. After all the bad news lately with the LMH (Le Mans Hypercar) class, I confess I was feeling a bit bleak about the 24 Hours of Le Mans. But with the recent good news coming from Audi and Porsche, things look a lot brighter.

Audi back to La Sarthe?!?

Yep, looks like it! According to Jalopnik, earlier today the manufacturer announced that it would be back at Le Mans. They will build a new LMDh car and starting in 2022 will compete in the WEC and IMSA series. So far Audi is the only big name confirmed for the new LMDh class at La Sarthe, but we can hope it will not be the only one.

Fingers crossed! 🤞

When NASCAR Raced at Le Mans

I told this story here before, or at least mentioned it, but it’s nice to see some footage of the feat. Yes, in 1976 you had NASCAR cars racing at La Sarthe. Something that may sound utterly absurd, but as GT Rain explains in the video, at the time it wasn’t so out of the question.

Well, that was the one time NASCAR was interesting… 🤣😂🤣😂

Derek Bell at Le Mans in 1982

Surfing around YouTube, I found this gem. It’s a feature about Derek Bell’s perspective of the 1982 race – which along with Jacky Ickx, he won by the way. You will see a delightful 26 minutes of original footage from the race and behind the scenes.

Not counting the actual footage, which was awesome, I loved to hear Bell’s thoughts throughout the race. Also, I learned that at the time, refueling stops became much longer, because of the restrictions on fuel flow.

So all in all a very nice film 👍

Was the 2020 race a “good Le Mans”?

Don’t think anyone will say it was a bad race, but it was certainly atypical. The pandemic forced it to be closed to the public, so there were no fans and only the technical pre-race events happened. The pre-race parade and all the fan events did not happen, and media coverage was limited. So all in all a very peculiar race compared to the traditional “Le Mans experience”.

Petrolicious wrote a very nice article about this year’s race, and touches exactly on those points. In the future people will look back and see 2020 as the last LMP1 race, where the TS050 won it’s third Le Mans in a row. But for us experiencing all this first hand and live, it sure was something strange.