Circuit de la Sarthe

The Bugatti Circuit, where Le Mans hosts a permanent layout for MotoGP and other events, is only the short southern section of the lap. The famous Mulsanne Straight, the Tertre Rouge approach, Indianapolis, Arnage and the run back through the Porsche Curves all use the D338 and surrounding country roads — which return to public traffic the Monday after the race.

This is the reason Le Mans cars are visually distinct from anything else in racing: they are designed to be stable at over 330 km/h on imperfect tarmac, in changing weather, for 24 hours, while sharing the same circuit with cars 100 km/h slower.

Until 1989, the Mulsanne Straight was an unbroken 6 km run from Tertre Rouge to the Mulsanne Corner braking zone. Sauber-Mercedes recorded 400 km/h+ down the Mulsanne in 1988; the FIA banned the use of unbroken straights longer than 2 km the following winter, and the ACO added two chicanes for 1990.

Modern Hypercars still hit roughly 330 km/h between the chicanes. The straight is still by far the longest at-speed section in any FIA-recognised championship — but the days of one continuous five-mile straight ended for safety reasons that no one disputes in retrospect.

From roughly 22:00 local time to 06:00, drivers race in pitch dark on roads with no continuous lighting between corners. Backmarkers travelling 80 km/h slower close at a relative speed that turns a single distracted second into a major accident. Fog, rain and mist along the Mulsanne are common in mid-June.

The winning car is rarely the fastest car in the daylight stints — it is usually the car that survived the night without a single mistake. The Audi LMP1 cars of the 2000s built their entire competitive philosophy around night-time reliability; Toyota lost the 2016 race in the final 6 minutes after dominating overnight.

A car that retires mechanically with five hours to go can still be sitting on the grid at the finish — but if it didn’t complete 70% of the winner’s distance, it doesn’t get a finishing position number. The official results table separates "Classified" cars (with positions) from "Not Classified" cars (listed below, in the order they reached their last lap).

This is why "the winner of Le Mans" and "the car at the front of the leading pack at the chequered flag" can be different things in unusual races. The rule exists to prevent gaming the format — historically, a car that retired briefly then crossed the line at 16:00 Sunday could be classified ahead of a car that ran the full 24 hours at lower pace. The 70% threshold pushes teams to keep running rather than coast across the line.

From 1923 to 1969 the race began with the "Le Mans start": drivers ran across the track from a line of painted boxes, jumped into their cars and drove off. In 1969 Jacky Ickx walked instead of ran — protesting that drivers were skipping seatbelts to save seconds — and still won.

The organisers adopted a rolling start in 1971. The modern start uses a parade lap behind a safety car, with the race going green at the Ford Chicane on the front straight, broadcast worldwide on Saturday afternoon.