24 Hours of Le Mans

HISTORY

The 24 hours of Le Mans is the oldest endurance race persisting in its glory to date. The race is conducted in France Circuit de la Sarthe near Le Mans town. The Le Mans is organized by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest abbreviated to ACO first in 1923. The 24 hours of Le Mans was earlier part of the world sportscar championship until 1992. This event is one of the most difficult races in the world because it takes place on public roads, which are closed during Le Mans week for use by up to 300,000 spectators.

The first 24 hours of Le Mans took place in 1923 and only ten cars participated. The winner was André Lagache and Louis Chiron in a Renault. In 1922, 33 cars start, and only 18 finish due to terrible weather conditions. The following year there are 38 starters and 30 finishers although no one knows exactly how many laps were completed because not all drivers made their required number of laps, One thing that was noted was that the distance increased by 100km (from 500km). In 1924, more than twenty cars were competing, and the race was won by a British team driving a Sunbeam. In 2011 it was a part of the intercontinental Le Mans cup and since 2012 it has been a part of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

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The cars raced in Le Mans are purpose-built endurance vehicles with a motive of completing the race without any significant damage to the machine. Unlike conventional races which take the car with the least time in the race as the winner, Le Mans takes the car with the maximum distance traveled in the race as the winner. Le Mans was launched to create fuel-efficient, reliable which can complete the race without much damage. The modern Le Mans race cars cover up to 5000 kilometers. The new regulation makes it mandatory to have three drivers in the whole race. The longest distance of a race in the Le Mans is 5410 kilometers set in 2010.

The early period of Le Mans had only the production car division, over time a new class- the prototype was added to the division class. The new classification criteria include prototypes and grand touring cars again further divided into two subgroups constructors’ prototypes, privateer prototypes for the prototype, and GTE PRO-Gran Turismo Endurance Professional and GTE AM-Gran Turismo Endurance Amateur for the GT cars. The engine is a V-shaped, water-cooled four-stroke engine with six cylinders. There are three cars to watch out for: the Porsche 911 RSR and GTE Pro class, McLaren 650 S GTLM (GT Le Mans), and Ferrari 458 Italia GTC.

All of the drivers are incredibly experienced and have competed in many races, including Le Mans. The French have been the most successful nationality in Le Mans, with 49 wins, followed by the United States with 27. The first engine was a Peugeot engine, but the winning Renault engine is still used in endurance racing today. In a 24 hour race like Le Mans, having a strong engine is key to success. The drivers need to be able to rely on their cars to perform well, and they also need to be in good shape themselves so that they can withstand the long race. They can reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour, and they require a lot of skill and experience to drive. The drivers in Le Mans are some of the best in the world, and they need to be able to perform well under pressure.

This race is one of the most challenging events in motorsports, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to win. With its long history, unique scoring system, the event slowly gained in stature until it was eventually included as part of the FIA World Sportscar Championship.-1973 saw a major rule change that allowed prototypes to race against GT cars. This led to much faster and more powerful cars, which in turn produced better racing and higher speeds.-In 1998, Audi stunned the competition with their all-new R15 TDI prototype which became the first diesel-powered car to win at Le Mans. Ever since then, diesel has been a dominant force in the race with Audi winning 13 times up until 2017. 2017 marked Porsche’s return to Le Mans after a 16-year absence and they did not disappoint by winning the race with their new Porsche 911 RSR. All the action takes place on a 15-mile circuit that consists of two long straights, several chicanes, and a couple of slow corners.-The race is held every year in June over 24 hours (from Saturday afternoon to Sunday).The race has roughly 60 contenders.

Each car is required to have at least two seats, but recently cars only need the ability to accommodate a second seat in the cockpit rather than the seat itself. No more than two doors are allowed; open cockpit cars do not require doors. Since 2014, all cars in the premier LMP1 category must have a roof due to safety concerns, with open-cockpit cars only permitted in the slightly slower LMP2 category. From 2011, the next two classes are production-based grand tourer (GT) classes, GT Endurance Pro and GT Endurance AM. Both of these classes use the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance or abbreviated to LMGTE regulations. Although the top class is the most likely to be the overall winner, lower classes have won on occasion due to better reliability Since 2017, all prototype cars, LMP1 or LMP2, must have closed cockpits. Although all cars compete at the same time, there are separate classes. A prize is awarded to the winner of each class and the overall winner. The number of classes has varied over the years, but there are now four. Custom-built Le Mans Prototypes (LMP) are the top two classes, LMP1 and LMP2, divided by speed, weight, and power output.

For LMP2, teams are bound to run one of four approved chassis – ORECA, Ligier, Dallara, or Multimatic/Riley – coupled with a standard 4.2-liter Gibson V8 engine. LMP1 teams are subject to no such restraints, quicker lap times are achieved with the extra power, lower weight, and more complex aerodynamics, LMP1 cars are also authorized to use hybrid technology.

2021 LE MANS TECHNICAL ASPECTS

In addition to its quest for a fourth successive Le Man’s win, the 2021 edition marks the 10th time Toyota has contended at La Sarthe with a hybrid-powered prototype. In the nine endeavors so far, the team has won three times, earned five pole positions, and finished on the podium a total of nine times. Andrea Quintarelli embarked on an in-depth analysis using lap time simulation to quantify and understand how the Hypercars may perform at Le Mans. The tool operated for this analysis was coded by the writer and is based on a quasi-static procedure: each small section of a track is analyzed considering a constant acceleration and that the vehicle is in steady-state prerequisites. The four-wheel vehicle model incorporates full aero maps, suspension kinematics, corner, and heave springs, bump stops for each axle, and anti-roll bars. The powertrain model inputs include a torque curve, gearbox efficiency, gear ratios, the portion of driving torque applied to each axle, and shift time. The tire model is similar to a Pacejka one, but each effect is modeled separately, including load, slip camber, and vertical characteristics (stiffness and expansion with speed). Simulation result results include more than 100 channels covering all areas of the car. Despite the simplified technique, the correlation against the real world is good, and the author feels engineers can use it with confidence for predictive analysis and general studies. At the time of writing, data from the 2021 WEC season’s first few races was available and could be used to understand how close the predictions and assumptions are to Hypercar performance on track at Le Mans. Spa-Francorchamps is a primary reference, as historically, this race is run with a similar setup to Le Mans in rehearsal for the 24-hour race. At Spa-Francorchamps 2021, Toyota acquired pole position with a lap time of 2 minutes 00.747 seconds. Toyota was allowed 1040kg total weight and 520kW of energy for the Belgian race.

Simulation runs were performed with the same vehicle model employed for Le Mans analysis, weighing 1130kg and without any set-up transformation from Spa-Francorchamps, which delivered lap times between 1 minute 59.6 seconds and 2m00.1s with 500kW, and between 1m58.9s and 1m59.4s with 520kW.To put this into context, the LMP2 vehicle model used to calibrate Le Mans simulation runs, set up with sprint gear ratios and settings suited to Spa, produced lap times between 2m02.970s and 2m03.392s, closely matching race weekend qualifying performance (pole was obtained by United Autosport with a time of 2m02.404s, with G-Drive in the second position on 2m02.984s). Supposing the inferences regarded for the Hypercar vehicle model are correct, it seems like the Hypercar class has not yet influenced its full performance possibility at any of the circuits WEC has visited in 2021 so far, and the Hypercar grid could show more prospects at Le Mans with little evolution and optimization.