The 24 Hours of Le Mans: Hour-by-Hour Guide
In mid-June each year, around the halfway point in the World Endurance Championship calendar, more than 50 cars line up to go wheel-to-wheel for a long, arduous, full 24 hours. This is Le Mans, and this is the most prestigious endurance race in the world.
This year will feature Hertz Team JOTA in their Porsche 963 hypercar, the top tier of endurance racing.
If you'll be tuning in, we've got an hour-by-hour guide on what to expect - from the swooping of the French tricolor at 4pm Saturday (local time – 10am EDT), to the triumphant checkered flag on 4pm Sunday.
What time does Le Mans start?
The race is the big spectacle - but the build-up starts a few days before. Practice sessions and qualifying take place in the days leading up to the main event, on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday is a rest day, before the action starts on the weekend.
Wednesday June 7th
- Free practice (2pm-7pm, 8am-1pm EDT). An opportunity for drivers to get used to the track and teams to tweak the car set-up.
- Qualifying practice (7pm-8pm, 1pm-2pm EDT). This is where teams look to set a fast time and qualify for the ‘hyperpole’ qualifying session on Thursday.
Thursday June 8th
- Free practice (3pm-6pm, 9am-12pm EDT). The last daytime practice session, and chance to make any final changes to the car.
- Hyperpole (8pm-8:30pm, 2pm-2:30pm EDT). The eight fastest cars in each class from Wednesday’s practice session battle it out for pole position.
- Free practice (10pm-11pm, 4pm-5pm EDT). A nighttime practice session for drivers to get used to the darker track conditions they’ll be racing in through Saturday night and into Sunday.
Friday June 9th
- A rest day for the drivers and teams, but an opportunity for the thousands of visitors and spectators to enjoy the many events held in and around the circuit.
Saturday June 10th
- Race warm-up (12pm-12:15pm, 6am-6:15am EDT).
- Parade of the Grande Exposition du Centenaire (12:30pm-1 :25pm, 6 :30am-7:25am EDT)
- RACE START: 4pm (10am EDT).
Sunday June 11th
- RACE FINISH: 4pm (10am EDT)
Saturday 10th June 2023, 4pm: The race starts
The 24 Hours of Le Mans starts at 4pm (10am EDT) on the Saturday with the swoop of a French tricolor flag – usually by a celebrity. It’s a rolling start, so the cars will do one lap, warming up their tires, before the safety car pulls into the pits. From there, it’s a cacophony of noise as more than 50 cars launch out of the final chicane and down the start/finish straight.
The epic 24-hour-long endurance contest officially begins.
Celebrities aren't just there for waving the flag, either. Hollywood actors Michael Fassbender and Patrick Dempsey have raced here before, as well as other international stars like Fabian Barthez – former goalkeeper for the French national soccer team.
4pm – 6pm: The grid settles
The first few laps are chaotic, as the tightly bunched field starts to spread out across the 8.5-mile circuit, each car vying to gain an advantage for the long haul. After all, it’s a motoring marathon – not a sprint.
A team’s drivers will swap every two to three hours – sometimes less – and up to a maximum of four hours. The upside for spectators is you can expect to see plenty of pit stops. Each team has three drivers in total, but they’ll try to keep pit times to a minimum where they can. After all, past races have been won and lost by seconds, even after 24 hours.
It’s a survival of motoring’s fittest and finest – an endurance test like no other.
6pm – 9pm: The rhythm of the race
Things are starting to develop. The cars are building momentum in the race. Even by this early point in the race, the hypercar class will have already covered similar ground to the entire Indy 500.
Around this time, the racing starts to hot up. At the 8pm mark in 2022, Team Jota led the train in the LMP2 category, battling fiercely with Team WRT, Richard Mille Racing and Penske.
The photographers will be wiping their lenses at this point as opportunities for a shot in front of the sunset beckons. We’re about to enter the golden hour.
9pm: Golden hour
The perfect time to take photos at Le Mans. Expect to see crowds of spectators pointing their cameras at the track from the Dunlop Bridge. If you go to a slower part of the course, you'll start to see cars' brake discs glowing orange as they brake heavily.
Things are well underway by now and the drivers will have already made their first few pit stops. At Le Mans it’s not all about speed, all of the time. The extensive duration of the race means drivers need to balance pace with stamina.
Like any form of motorsport, it’s not just the drivers that make a difference. The wider team including race engineers, also plays a crucial role. The synergy between both is key to helping the team’s performance – like the different parts of a clock working together to make it tick.
Timing is critical. One wrong move can jeopardize the whole race. It’s a competition of fine margins at exhilarating speeds. Around this time in the 2022 race only half a second separated classic rivals Porsche and Ferrari in the GTE-Pro Class.
9:58pm: Driving into the darkness
As the sun sinks beneath the horizon and daylight disappears, the darkness of night spreads across the circuit. The pit straight is still like a funfair - but on the Mulsanne Straight, it's like driving through a black, deserted forest.
With no more natural light, visibility comes down to headlights – and track knowledge. Tiredness grows. Instincts sharpen. The drivers aren't the only component that start to feel the strain, however. In 2022, Glickenhaus’ car was pulled back into the garage after the tires gave out mid-corner in Tertre Rouge, causing the car to spin.
As we edge closer to midnight, yellow flags become a more common sight. There are many reasons for this. Slower cars find it harder to spot faster-moving classes in their mirrors. Also, as prototypes share the track with the GTE class, the difference in performance between cars can make overtaking difficult. A slow zone was enforced from Mulsanne to Arnage in 2022 after a few hiccups on the track.
We’re now entering the graveyard shift – where races can be won and lost.
12am – 6am: The graveyard shift
Expect a few driver changes to have occurred by now. This stretch is a real test of driver’s mettle. It’s dark, and fatigue sets in across both drivers and engines.
With tiredness taking over, it’s normal for attention spans to lower – increasing the likelihood of human error. The 2022 race saw a seven second loss for a Toyota Gazoo Racing car due to a problematic pit stop just after 4.33am.
Mechanics often use this period as an opportunity to steal minutes of sleep between pitstops, while the race engineer is often awake for the full 24 hours.
6am – 9am: Blinking into the Sunrise
The end is nigh. You might think the climax is almost in sight, but when the sun rises at 6am on Sunday, there's still another 10 hours of racing to go. This is a notoriously challenging part of the race.
While the stands around the circuit were teeming with life earlier in the evening, many of them are now empty all but for the most committed of supporters.
Difficult visibility in the early morning light plus driver fatigue are now a real challenge. Despite racing for 14 hours, the order will still change a lot over the remainder of the race. Our very own driver Antonio Felix Da Costa posted Hertz Team JOTA’s fastest lap of the race around the 10:25am in last year’s race. At the 6am mark Panis Racing driver Jamin went off the track on the tricky Mulsanne Corner, causing a slow zone. The Mulsanne section has proven quite tricky to maneuver over the years - in 1997 Kelleners’ car even caught fire down the Mulsanne Straight.
9am – 12pm: The circuit awakens
Despite the drivers having raced through the night, and many of their pit crew and engineers not getting much chance to sleep, large numbers of spectators will have bedded down briefly. Whether camping close to the action or staying somewhere nearby, those who chose to catch even a few hours of concerted sleep will now be making their way back to the trackside, taking a seat for the thrilling grand finale.
12pm – 4pm: The final stretch
Nothing is guaranteed until a car crosses the finish line. It could have all been plain sailing until now, but any slight slip up or miscalculation of pit stop timing can see the race lost. Like in 2016 when Toyota driver Nakajima almost made it all the way to the end, stopping just before the finish line due to a faulty turbocharger and intercooler connection.
In 2001, Audi lost two of their three cars but still managed to overtake the leading Peugeot with quarter of the race to go. They managed to fend off pressure from the second-place car and won by a mere 14 seconds.
It’s not always the top manufacturers that are successful. Some of the relative minnows of motorsport have been known to rank highly, in epic tales of David vs Goliath. Lowly GTE Am team Seikel Porsche won its class by a full lap and achieved an overall top six finish in 2001, as heavy rain caused many of the faster prototype vehicles out of contention entirely.
Those getting over the line will feel a huge sense of achievement as an entire day of continuous racing comes to its climax. Completing the race requires a heady combination of mental strength, technical resilience and strategic intelligence. And, maybe, a healthy dose of luck. Expect to see spectators swarm onto the track as they head towards the podium to celebrate the winner.
That completes an hour-by-hour breakdown of the greatest endurance motorsport race of them all. From the fanfare of the opening ceremony and the sheer beauty of golden hour, all the way through the darkness of night and staggering into dawn – and across the line – there is a magic to the proceedings of Le Mans that few other sporting events can match.
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