Over 350,000 spectators are set to watch 62 cars compete around the clock.
This weekend, France hosts one of motorsport’s three major events: the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans. This endurance race, alongside the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix, forms the 'triple crown'—an unofficial accolade that only the late Graham Hill has ever achieved. This year, 62 different vehicles will start, racing on a combination of a permanent circuit and public roads that locals use for everyday errands the rest of the year.
While not the world’s oldest race, it ranks among them—first held in 1923, this marks its 94th edition. It was conceived as a brutal test for the automotive industry’s new machinery and has remained the motorsport domain with the strongest ties to road cars. Disc brakes transitioned from aerospace to road vehicles at Le Mans, and brake improvements continue to be evaluated there today. It’s also where companies like Porsche, Audi, and Toyota validated new hybrid technology, brake-by-wire systems, direct-injection engines, and advanced headlights, among other innovations.
This year, the 62 cars are divided into three classes, each manned by three drivers who take turns at the wheel. Some drivers are professionals—among the world’s elite. But many are amateurs; in the past, oddly enough, a lot of dentists. Nowadays, with racing costs, it’s the tech entrepreneurs. The creator of Ruby on Rails, the co-founder of GitHub, and the co-founder of Crowdstrike are all competing in the LMP2 class. Meanwhile, Valve’s Gabe Newell owns the Aston Martin team, which is competing in both Hypercar—with the striking-looking and -sounding Valkyrie—and LMGT3, where his son Gray will be one of the drivers.
**Hypercar**
The top class, featuring the fastest cars, is called Hypercar, contested by factory teams with all-professional driver lineups. We’ve covered Hypercar extensively over the past few years, along with the closely related GTP class racing in IMSA’s WeatherTech series in the US. These are closed-roof, mid-engined prototypes, mostly hybrids purpose-built for racing.
Ferrari, Peugeot, and Toyota each designed their cars entirely in-house under regulations called LMH, which permits placing the electric hybrid motor on the front axle, though the cars can only use this temporary all-wheel drive above 93 mph (150 km/h).
Aston Martin also builds its car to LMH, but the Valkyrie began as a road car, designed by F1 legend Adrian Newey. However, it had to shed the road car’s hybrid system and a significant amount of power and aerodynamic downforce to meet the LMH rules. Ironically, the Valkyrie is perhaps the most authentic car in the Hypercar class—when the category was first proposed by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (which organizes the race), the aim was to have racing versions of road-going hypercars like the Valkyrie or Mercedes’ AMG-One. That was until everyone realized how costly and challenging that might be; only Aston Martin took on that challenge.
The bulk of Hypercar—Alpine, BMW, Cadillac, and now Genesis—are cars built to LMDh specifications, imported from IMSA in Daytona Beach, Florida. But those automakers aren’t responsible for the entire vehicle. The central carbon-fiber chassis or spine comes from one of four builders (Oreca, Dallara, Multimatic, Ligier), and all LMDh cars must use the same transmission, hybrid motor, and hybrid battery. The automakers then design the bodywork and supply their own engines and software. LMDh is a cheaper approach than LMH, but it’s notable that in the first three years of the class, introduced in 2023, an LMDh car has yet to win Le Mans—a fact that almost certainly explains Porsche’s absence from the top category in 2026.
If that sounds complicated, that’s sportscar racing for you. To keep performance balanced among all the different cars, the sport uses a process called “balance of performance” to handicap machines into equality, with a maximum power output of 670 hp (500 kW).
Things should become slightly less complicated by 2030. Earlier today, the ACO and IMSA, along with the FIA (which oversees the World Endurance Championship, as well as F1), announced that in 2030 there will be a unified class for Le Mans, WEC, and the WeatherTech championship. All-wheel drive is out; all cars must be rear-wheel drive hybrids. But you can either build the entire car yourself (like LMH) or use an approved spine and hybrid system as a starting point (like LMDh).
**LMP2**
LMP2 cars are sports prototypes one step below the Hypercars. Originally, there were four different makes from the same manufacturers as those LMDh spines—LMDh evolved from what was meant to be the LMP2 replacement—but the Oreca 07 proved so superior that no one races a Ligier, Dallara, or Riley-Multimatic anymore. All cars use the same 4.0 L Gibson V8 making 600 hp (447 kW), with no hybrid system. These cars also have more aerodynamic downforce than the Hypercars, making them more enjoyable to drive, by all accounts.
Nine of the 19 LMP2 teams racing this year have a mix of professional and amateur drivers, and it’s in these pro-am teams that we find our Silicon Valley entrants, along with some younger drivers yet to advance through the bronze/silver/gold/platinum ranking system. The other 10 teams have more professional lineups. A standout to watch this year is Doriane Pin, the young French driver who won Formula 1 Academy last year, particularly after a stunning lap during the first qualifying session on Wednesday.
**LMGT3**
The final category is for cars that began as genuine road cars. In the past, Le Mans has featured various flavors of what the sport calls GT cars, some more specialized than others. Eventually, costs became too high for GT1, then GT2 (later called GTE, or GTLM in IMSA), and in 2024 the ACO decided to adopt the GT3 category, created back in 2005 by Stéphane Ratel as a way to make sports car racing more affordable for amateurs. (Note: more affordable is not the same as cheap.)
Under the old system (GT1 and GT2), the ACO published a rulebook with acceptable modifications; automakers built their cars to those rules and raced to see who was fastest. But each race can have only one winner, and if one make starts to dominate, rivals either spend more, driving up costs for everyone, or give up and do something else. GT3 solved that problem, again with balance of performance.
Each OEM builds their new car, then it’s benchmarked against the class, with power and weight adjusted to keep it in the right range. Different cars achieve lap times in different ways, and some cars perform better at particular tracks than others, but the category has been a worldwide success. You can race a GT3 car at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the Spa 24 Hours, or the Nurburgring 24, as well as shorter but equally grueling events like the Bathurst 12 Hours or the 12 Hours of Sebring, not to mention numerous other series and events. There are 25 LMGT3 cars in this year’s race, all from pro-am teams that must have at least one bronze and one silver driver among the crew.
**Further reading**
Millions or perhaps even billions of words have been written about Le Mans across its 94 runnings, some better than others. I highly recommend Richard Williams’ recent book *24 Hours*, written for the race’s centenary year in 2023.
The race starts at 4 pm local time tomorrow—10 am Eastern, 7 am Pacific—and you can watch it in the US on HBO or Tru, or via the FIAWEC+ streaming service, which is no longer geoblocked. There’s also the excellent Radio Le Mans commentary, broadcast free online.