The tweaks that could make a landmark Le Mans even better

People always ask me a simple question: What is your favourite Le Mans 24 Hours? It’s an inevitable request when you’ve been to as many of the things as I have. My total now stands at 34.

Favourite for me means best, as in the best motor race. And each year as I travel down through France to the biggest event of my year the mind always turns to whether this one will jump somewhere near the top of my personal ranking.

The 2024 edition last weekend didn’t disappoint, though I’ve yet to decide where it fits in among some of the classics I’ve had the honour of witnessing and reporting on for Autosport. It was a brilliant race with high drama at the end, not withstanding the fact that six hours, give or take, took place behind the safety car.

Was it up there with 2008 and 2011, those amazing confrontations between the Audi and Peugeot LMP1 turbodiesels? I don’t know, or rather have yet to decide. Nor am I sure if it I’m going to put it above 2023, like this year another dramatic Ferrari versus Toyota battle.

PLUS: How Ferrari overcame multiple threats to defend its Le Mans crown

What I must never forget, however, is that there were nine cars in Hypercar on the lead lap. I’ll say that again for effect: nine cars on the lead lap. That’s unprecedented at Le Mans.

In fact, never before in the now 101-year history of the race have more than two cars still been on the same lap out front as the leaders set off for the final time around the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe. Just to reinforce my point about how close it was this time, I’m going to stress that only six times in the current century have there actually been two cars on the lead lap.

The #7 Toyota was the winning Ferrari's closest challenger, but there were another seven cars that were also on the lead lap in a new piece of Le Mans history

Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt

The two factory Ferraris and the pair of Toyotas were joined by four Porsches — two from Penske and two from Jota — and a Cadillac on 311 laps at the conclusion of the centrepiece round of the World Endurance Championship. Could any of that quartet of manufacturers won? Absolutely, given that this was a race held in changeable conditions with frequent yellow-flag interruptions.

I’m not saying that Porsche and Cadillac were quite up there on pace with the top two marques, but they weren’t far off. And if you’re on the same lap as the leaders anything can happen. The Spa 6 Hours back in May reminded us of that.

The internal debate I’ll be having about where 2024 fits in with the other great races I’ve witnessed at Le Mans will undoubtedly be influenced by the means by which we have got a situation where we had nine cars up there at the end. The golden age of sportscar racing that’s now polishing up quite nicely is, of course, Balance of Performance racing. That makes it all slightly artificial.

Having all 62 cars from the three classes out on track at the same time ensured there were any number of tales of woe about slower cars getting in the way last week

Ditto the new safety car procedures introduced last year. There’s no doubt the caution periods played a role in keeping the field closed up at the front, both the latest system and the sheer amount of time they were out on track. The system undoubtedly makes it easier to stay on the same lap as the leader: bunching the pack up behind a single safety car before the wave-around allows cars between the the course vehicle and the leader in class to buzz around to the back of the queue.

I’m not knocking the presence of the BoP at the very pinnacle of the branch of the sport in which I have devoted my adult life. It is a fundamental building block of the success of Hypercar and GTP over in North America in the IMSA SportsCar Championship: no BoP, no golden era. It’s as simple as that. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it will probably temper how I look back on last weekend in my dotage.

The same goes for the safety car situation. If you can lose three minutes or more on pace and then gain it back artificially in the blink of an eye, then you have to say that the racing is not as pure as it once was. But I concede that in the modern world of instant gratification, endurance racing has to move with the times. So I was happy with a couple of developments introduced at Le Mans this year.

A new component of the BoP belatedly came on stream in Hypercar last weekend, the so-called power gain. It adjusts the maximum power of the cars above a certain speed, set at 250km/h or 155mph for the Circuit de la Sarthe, to try to equalise straightline speeds. If you accept that the BoP is a now part of the landscape of sportscar racing and isn’t going anywhere, then it has to be a good thing. It’s another tool for the rule makers to level the playing field.

The BoP mechanisms in place made Le Mans a thrilling multi-marque spectacle

Photo by: JEP/Motorsport Images

As interminably long the safety car periods might have felt to those watching from the grandstands or on TV, a tweak to the procedure for this year was another positive. The so-called drop back, the process by which the cars were in 2023 formed up in class groups ready for the green flag, has been done away with. It’s cut a few minutes off the whole drawn-out process.

It shows that there is always room for improvement with the format of a race even as important and prestigious as Le Mans. There is, however, one change I’d like to see and it concerns qualifying. Hyperpole in which the top eight cars in each class in the opening timed session battle it out for a TV-friendly half an hour on Thursday works for me. What I don’t like is how those eight cars get there.

The hour-long first qualifying session on Wednesday has become a lottery, particularly in Hypercar. Getting a traffic-free lap is always the key to a quick time around Le Mans. Catch a slower car in the Porsches Curves, for example, and it’s game over for that lap.

Having all 62 cars from the three classes out on track at the same time ensured there were any number of tales of woe about slower cars getting in the way last week. An ability to manage the traffic is one of the core skills required by a driver who is going to be successful at Le Mans, but if we are really looking for the ultimate spectacle on Thursday evening you need the fastest eight cars going through to the final round of qualifying.

I can’t help wondering if it would be better to give each class its own mini-session as is the case in the regular WEC races. It would surely be the fairer way of doing things, and improve the spectacle, too.

Endurance racing is always looking for new ways to woo the fans. It’s not the unadulterated branch of motor racing that that it once was. But what was once described by former Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical boss Pascal Vasselon as an “Americanisation” of sportscars is here to stay. That I have no doubt.

I’m not complaining, and I’m going to say it again: Nine cars on the lead lap!

Should Le Mans introduce qualifying sessions for each of its classes next year to ensure the very best crews participate in Hyperpole?

Photo by: Marc Fleury