Updated: The ultimate Le Mans 24 2020 guide

What is the Le Mans 24 2020?

It is, to put it simply, the greatest endurance motorsport event on the planet. One of, if not the, most prestigious races in the world. Run every year that there hasn’t been a major global conflict since 1923, on a circuit largely unchanged over the last 90-odd years in the Sarthe department of France, in the Loire valley, it has become something of a pilgrimage for British fans over the years.

Where does the Le Mans 24 happen?

The Circuit de La Sarthe, south of the French city of Le Mans. The key aspect of the Le Mans 24 Hours is that it is run partly on public roads. Originally it was entirely public roads, the 8.467-mile (13.626km) Circuit de la Sarthe contains a section around the pit area that is now purpose built track, but then plunges off into the French countryside, down public highways, with its most famous feature – the 3.7-mile (6km) main straight – made up of the route departementale D338. That straight, officially the Ligne Droite des Hunaudieres, but more colloquially as the Mulsanne straight, as it runs toward the town of Mulsanne, was originally a flat out blast for well over a minute, in which drivers would tend to have a rest and reset their belts. Now it is punctuated by a pair of fast, but tricky chicanes, which break up the long straight, actually making the lap tougher for the drivers, as it takes more of their concentration. The straight, plus the run away from Muslanne, toward the corners of Indianapolis (named after the circuit in America) and Arnage (named after another town nearby) run through tightly packed French forest, with the road rutted by the trucks that regularly thunder through this area of France.

The rest of the circuit is made of up a mixture of sweeping corners – Indanapolis and the fast, barrier-lined permanent track section of the Porsche Curves – and the main area of the pits and paddock, which runs through a pair of tight chicanes, through the massive grandstands of the pit straight, and back out toward the Hunaudieres. Cars run on the circuit right up toward the very day of the race, meaning that the rubber built up in practice and qualifying sessions is constantly being swept away. This makes the race a unique task not only in the sportscar world, but pretty much in any motorsport.

When is Le Mans 2020? What time does the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours start?

The 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours starts on Saturday 19^th September and Sunday 20^th September 2020, and the race will begin at 2:30pm Central European Time, or 1:30pm BST. It has traditionally switched between 3pm and 4pm local time, but the move from its normal place in June to September and its longer night time has seen a switch to an earlier start.

Before that there will be three free practice sessions on Thursday, at 10am, 2pm and 8pm – the latter to help drivers adjust to extra night time for 2020 – and another on Friday at 10am. Qualification is split over a 45-minute session at 5:15pm local time on Thursday and a 30-minute Hyperpole session for the fastest cars at 11.30am on the Friday.

Hyperpole is a new innovation for 2020, adding an extra, shoot-out style session to keep the interest up during qualifying, Traditionally this had been split out over roughly six hours of officially timed running on Wednesday and Thursday nights, meaning times were often set early, before focus switched to race set ups. Hyperpole should mean all the top teams have to go out to set a fast time in a short, action-packed session. Don’t be surprised if someone has a go at breaking the outright lap record, currently held by Kamui Kobayashi of Toyota, with this being the last year for the ultra-fast Hybrid cars.

Morning warm up begins race day at 10:30am local time – later than the normal 8:30 start – before the pomp and ceremony of race begins after the final support race ends around 12:10pm. This is not to be missed, even if you can’t be there physically, with the French Army traditionally delivering the Tricolore, the French flag, which is used to begin the race, via military helicopter.

What cars race at Le Mans?

There are four classes at the Le Mans 24 Hours, all matching the four classes of the World Endurance Championship. With this set to be the last year for the current regulations, pretty much everything below is racing for the last time in its current form.

Update 12^th September 2020: Barely one week before the start of the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours the race was hit by the news that the only Ginetta G60-LT-P1, entered by owner Lawrence Tomlinson's Team LNT outfit, had withdrawn. This reduces the LMP1 entry to just five cars. Team LNT, which has not raced the Ginetta since November, and withdrew from the Austin and Spa rounds to prepare for the Le Mans 24 Hours, said that the increasing travel restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic was the reason for the withdrawal.

Le Mans Prototype 1 – commonly known as LMP1. These are the fastest cars on the grid, and the fastest cars ever to race in sportscar racing. The front-running Toyota TS050s are super-fast hybrid technological spaceships, with a turbocharged V6 petrol engine, producing around 500PS, supplemented by a hybrid energy recovery system that deploys up to another 500PS above 62mph (100km/h) for some truly mind boggling acceleration. These incredible machines have dominated Le Mans since their introduction back in 2014 (although hybrid cars similar to these raced in 2012 and ’13). They are up against three independently-entered machines from Rebellion (pretty much a factory team for the long-running Oreca sportscar manufacturer), Ginetta with its G60-LT-P1 and ByKolles with its long-lived, but fragile, Enso CLM. These two machines are not hybrid-powered, so will struggle to stay with the Toyotas when they begin to lap slower machines, but are still faster than most other cars to race at Le Mans, and actually faster than the hybrids in terms of top speed. Restrictions that peg the Toyotas back during the World Endurance Championship season, to give the independent teams a chance, will not be in place during the big race.

Le Mans Prototype 2 – commonly known as LMP2. This is the lower class of prototype racing at Le Mans, and also the basic specification for most prototype racing around the world. It is also the largest class at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2020 with a whopping 24 cars entered. All but five are Oreca 07 chassis, with the exceptions being the Signatech-run Alpine A470 (itself really a rebadged Oreca), three Ligier JSP217, run by the lowly Eurointernational, Inter Europol and Eurasia Motorsprot teams, and one Dallara P217 of Cetilar Racing. Only four chassis are allowed to compete in LMP2, with the Oreca showing itself pretty quickly to be far and away the best option, it quickly established itself as the only car to use if you had designs on victory. All LMP2 cars are powered by a Gibson V8 engine (a brilliant sounding motor in real life), but, unlike the other classes, in LMP2 there is a tyre battle, with five cars using Goodyears, and the rest on Michelin. With so many chassis the same, and the teams looking to double, triple and sometimes quadruple stint their tyres, this could be one of the major battle grounds in 2020.

GTE Pro and GTE Am – these are both the same rules for cars, the difference being the drivers. GTE Pro is where you find the manufacturer teams, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Porsche are the only ones remaining, after Ford and BMW pulled out of sportscars at the end of 2019 and Corvette elected not to come to Le Mans this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The grid for GTE Pro is also dropped by the reduction in American teams from Porsche taking part, but expect the eight cars in the class to run nose-to-tail for many, many hours while the race settles in. GTE Am is where you find the Gentlemen Drivers, the people who fund a large amount of the teams buy bringing cash into the sport so they can race. That’s not to do these guys down, as they will race as hard as any, but each car in GTE Am has at least one ‘bronze’ ranked driver, the drivers who’s main profession is not ‘racing driver’. With 22 cars in the class this will be another incredibly close-fought battle between Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin. So important are these customer drivers to the manufacturers that many will race with a factory-provided professional in their squad, in order to maximise their chances.

Who is racing at Le Mans in 2020?

The grid reads like a who’s who of the motorsport world, with many former F1 drivers finding a new home in sportscars as well as many up and coming drivers. Four of the six drivers who will race for Toyota have F1 experience (Sebastien Buemi, Kamui Kobayashi, Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajimi) and the other two are a WTCC champion and an IndyCar race winner (Jose Maria Lopez and Mike Conway). Rebellion field Goodwood Hill record holder Romain Dumas and ex-Williams, Lotus and HRT F1 driver Bruno Senna, while former race winner Guy Smith will race for Ginetta.

LMP2 does not drop the stakes at all, with former long-time factory drivers Oliver Jarvis, Felipe Albuquerque and Nico Lapierre all racing. Former race winner Nick Tandy will partner Jarvis in possibly the most fearsome line-up of the P2 field – a G-Drive backed OReca. Ex-F1 drivers include Juan Pablo Montoya, Paul Di Resta, Giedo Van Der Garde and Anthony Davidson. As if that wasn’t enough, new Formula E champion Antonio-Felix Da Costa and double FE champion and DS Techeetah team-mate Jean-Eric Vernge race in P2, while the rest of the field is littered with ex-F2 and GP2 racers. Another team to look out for is the Richard Mille Racing Team’s all-female line up. Currently confirmed to race are former F2 racer Tatiana Calderon, F3 driver, and survivor of an horrific crash at Macau, Sophie Flörsch and W Series regular Bietske Visser.

GTE Pro is also a who’s who of motorsport, with some of the greatest racers in GT Racing history plying their trade in the formula. Toni Vilander, Gianmaria Bruni, Fred Makowieki, Laurens Vanthoor, Maxime Martin, Harry Tinknell, Olivier Pla and Kevin Estre could rightly claim a place in the pantheon of GT greats, while they are supplemented by Formula E racers James Calado and Sam Bird, ex-F2 racer Alex Lynn and internet legend Nicki Thiim. It’s almost impossible to take your eyes off the GT class, even in GTE Am you’ll find Ex-F1 drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Jan Magnussen.

Who will start the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours on pole?

It will come as no surprise that the only manufacturer entered LMP1 car, and the only hybrid left on the grid — Toyota's TS050 — will start on pole. Ex-F1 racer Kamui Kobayashi set a pole time of 3 minutes 15.267 seconds. The Japanese racer had been on an even faster lap as time ticked away at the end of the session — already almost a second up, a time which could have beaten his own outright circuit record — when his lap was deleted due to a track limits violation. Surprisingly the second Toyota will not line up alongside Kobayashi's #7, as fellow Japanese racer Kazuki Nakajima could only find a time of 3m 16.649s in the #8 car, beaten by an incredible lap from the #1 Rebellion R13. That lap was set by American racer Gustavo Menezes.

LMP2 pole was taken by former F1 racer and current Sky Sports F1 pundit Paul Di Resta, just 0.3 seconds ahead of the G-Drive racing #26 machine of double-Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne. Third place went to F2 champion Nyck De Vries, in the Jumbo-sponsored Racing Team Nederland Oreca. Interstingly Jumbo — a Dutch supermarket brand owned by Frits van Eerd, who is racing in the car — could pull off a rather odd double this weekend should the team win LMP2. Jumbo is also sponsoring the current leaders in the Tour de France, and could win both French classics on the same day on Sunday.

The GT ranks were as tight as ever, with nine cars in Pro and Am separated by just a second during Hyperpole qualifying. It was Italian veteran Gianmaria Bruni, in the #91 Porsche 911 RSR, that ended the session on top, ahead of James Calado's Ferrari 458 and Marco Sorensen's Aston Martin Vantage. The Luzich Racing Ferrari 458 of Come Ledegar will start on pole in GTE Am, outqualifying three of the six GTE Pro cars that took part in Hyperpole.

What manufacturers race at Le mans?

Toyota remain the only manufacturer in LMP1, with new regulations coming over the next few years promising some more brands to compete against the Japanese behemoth. In GT Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin are the only three brands on show, after Ford and BMW left the series last year and Corvette elected not to cross the pond due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Who won last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours?

Toyota. As they did in 2018. In the hands of Kazuki Nakajima, Sebastien Buemi and that man Fernando Alonso. They became the only OEM racing in LMP1 when first Audi, and then Porsche quit in 2016 and 2017.

What is different this year?

The race is being run in September for one thing. It has only been held in September once before, in 1968, when a rash of protests, strikes and general civil unrest broke out in France. It was won by the J.W. Automtotive Gulf GT40 of Pedro Rodriguez and Pedro Bianchi, Ford’s third straight win at Le Mans.

The change in date will mean several changes. Firstly it will probably be a cooler race. Normally the race is the week before the summer solstice, with temperatures in recent years regularly climbing well above 30°C – and into the 40s on the track. The average temperature in Le Mans in September is just 22°C, which will change the complexion of the race. Secondly there will be more night. Running so close to the summer solstice means there is normally only around eight hours of darkness during the race, with the sun setting toward 9pm and rising by 5am. In 2020 you can expect it to set by 8pm and not return until gone 7:30am, leaving nearly 12 hours of darkness for the teams to deal with. This will change not only how the cars behave, but also the drivers, with more night to deal with it will be harder for some of the teams to juggle their minimum driving times for amateur drivers without leaving them in the car in the pitch night of a French Autumn. Expect some new dynamics to enter the race.

Where can I watch the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours?

You can watch the whole race on the race’s app, which is the World Endurance Championship app most of the year and adds streaming function for €13.99 for the whole season or €9.99 for just Le Mans. In the UK Eurosport will also be covering the whole race. You can access Eurosport via several digital television services, but also through the Eurosport Player, which is £6.99 a month or £39.99 for a whole year – a seven day trial is available to new users. Amazon Prime subscribers can also add Eurosport to their subscription for the same £6.99 fee, on top of the Amazon subscription of £7.99 a month – a 30 day trial is available for new users on Amazon Prime.

In the US it will be available in full for its entirety on the MotorTrend App and on MotorTrend TV. MotorTrend and Eurosport are owned by Discovery, so they will share coverage. In the US a subscription to the MotorTrend App will set you back $2 a month, and it'll provide you with a customizable live viewing experience featuring onboard cameras from six vehicles, plus the traditional, live flag-to-flag coverage. (In the UK a MotorTrend on Demand subscription costs £3.99 a month or £39.99 for a year – again a free trial is available to new users, this time for 14 days.) Race coverage on the app and on MotorTrend TV starts at 8:15am ET, or 5:15am PT. The app will also show qualifying, free practice, Hyperpole and warm up.

If you're a member of the GRRC there is one final option open to you, and that is to watch the race on a big scree at the Goodwood Racecourse. There are three sessions to choose from – dusk, evening and morning – or you can come to all three, with suitably distanced tables that seat up to six people. Entry is free of charge and food and drink can be ordered and brought to your table to ensure that the event remains as safe as possible. To find out more or book a space, click here.

Much like Goodwood’s SpeedWeek presented by Mastercard, the Le Mans 24 Hours will take place behind closed doors. And like Goodwood the ACO are attempting to enhance their streaming options as a result. Thanks to public response to the Virtual 24 Hours, which replaced the original race date earlier in the year, the ACO have launched 24h-united.com a new website to bring fans extra in depth content around the race. The platform will offer extra audio and visual content for spectators including “making of” features, video from race control, live video from the commentary box and 360 stills to bring the action to you.The website, which also features content around the past and future of the Le Mans 24 Hours, is free to register, but fans will be encouraged to donate to a fundraising campaign in aid of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine to help train medical staff in the treatment of COVID-19. Donators names will feature on a virtual wall during the event and those who pledge more than €150 will see their names physically set in stone at the circuit.

Who will win the 2020 Le mans 24 Hours?

Toyota, unless something goes very wrong. There have been steps put in place to peg the mighty TS050 back in the rest of the WEC season, but the agreement was that those balance of performance restrictions would be removed for the most important race of the season. Expect Rebellion to be there to pick up the pieces should something go wrong.

In GT it’s a far more open question. Ferrari won last year, with James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra finishing ahead of the Porsche of Richard Lietz, Gianmaria Bruni and Fred Makowiecki. Expect Aston Martin to come out fighting after a lacklustre 2019 race – and with its honour to protect after the pausing (and presumed cancellation) of its promised Le Mans Hypercar project after Lawrence Stroll invested in the company and brought them into Formula 1 from 2021 with Racing Point.

LMP2 and GTE Am? Those are anybody’s guess.

What is the future of the Le Mans 24 Hours?

Everything will change next year, and yet everything will stay the same (plus ça change etc...). LMP1 cars will disappear, replaced by Le Mans Hypercars (LMH). Currently only Toyota, Bykolles and Glickenhaus are really committed to the first year of the rules, so it remains to be seen if it’s just another Toyota cakewalk. After that the LMH cars will be joined by a new class, set to race on equal terms: LMDh. These cars are also known as DPi 2.0 and are the next generation of top level prototype racing in the US’s IMSA series. Based, like the current DPi cars, on LMP2 chassis, manufacturers who choose LMDh will use their own engines and aero and potentially hybrid systems, and their performance will be carefully balanced to match the LMH cars. Peugeot have committed to returning to Le Mans, but are yet to confirm whether they will arrive with an LMH or LMDh car, and other manufacturers rumoured to be considering an LMDh car include Ferrari, McLaren and even new F1 team Alpine.

The new cars will not be as fast as the current LMP1 cars, so even if Toyota walk their way to another victory, we should all enjoy watching the most technologically advanced racing cars ever made one last time at the world’s greatest race.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.