Over a century of racing — from the cobbled streets of 1920s France to today's 300 km/h hybrid hypercars. This is the story of the world's most famous race.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans was born from a practical question: which cars are actually the most useful? In the early 1920s, the automobile was still a new and unreliable technology. The Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) wanted a race that would test endurance and fuel efficiency over speed alone — something that would advance real-world automotive engineering.
The first 24 Hours of Le Mans was held on May 26–27, 1923. André Lagache and René Léonard in a Chenard & Walcker won after covering 2,209 km — roughly the distance from Le Mans to Warsaw. The format was revolutionary: the winning car was not simply the fastest, but the one that covered the most distance while making the fewest fuel stops and keeping mechanical failures at bay.
The original circuit used public roads around the town of Le Mans — much as it still does today, although the modern circuit is more refined and has permanent sections built alongside the road sections. That connection to real roads, real terrain, and real-world conditions has never been lost.
British manufacturer Bentley dominated the late 1920s with a group of wealthy amateur drivers who became known as the Bentley Boys — Woolf Barnato, Tim Birkin, Dudley Benjafield, and others. These men raced huge, powerful four-and-a-half litre cars with as much bravado as engineering nous.
Bentley won five times between 1924 and 1930. The most famous moment came in 1928 when Woolf Barnato and Bernard Rubin won despite the car spending hours in the pits with a broken headlight bracket — the endurance spirit embodied in a single repair session. Bentley's Le Mans dominance gave the British brand a romantic racing heritage it still trades on nearly a century later.
Ferrari and Alfa Romeo entered the picture in the 1930s, with the red Italian cars beginning a decades-long love affair with Le Mans. But the Second World War interrupted everything — the race was not held from 1940 to 1948.
No account of Le Mans history can omit 1955. It was, and remains, the deadliest accident in motorsport history.
On the evening of June 11, 1955, a collision between the Austin-Healey of Lance Macklin and the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR of Pierre Levegh sent the Mercedes cartwheeling into the spectator enclosure opposite the pits. The car disintegrated, and its engine, bonnet, and other heavy components flew into the packed crowd. 83 spectators were killed, along with Pierre Levegh. More than 120 people were injured.
Mercedes-Benz withdrew its entire team immediately, and despite winning the race themselves (in other entered cars), the manufacturer quit motorsport entirely and would not return to factory competition for decades. Several countries cancelled their Grand Prix races that year. The world of motorsport was shaken to its core.
The immediate aftermath brought sweeping safety reforms at Le Mans and across the sport. The barriers between cars and spectators were strengthened, escape roads were widened, and the armco barriers that are today standard in motorsport were developed partly in response to this disaster. Every safety advance made at Le Mans since 1955 exists because 83 people died that June evening.
The 1955 24 Hours was not cancelled — racing continued overnight and Jaguar won. The decision not to stop the race remains deeply controversial. Race organizers believed that stopping would cause worse chaos in the crowds and on surrounding roads. Whether that decision was right has been debated ever since.
The most celebrated chapter in Le Mans history began with a personal grudge. In 1963, Henry Ford II attempted to buy Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari agreed to negotiate, then backed out at the last moment — reportedly insulting Ford personally in the process. Ford was furious. He authorized an unlimited budget to beat Ferrari at Le Mans.
The result was the Ford GT40 — a low, powerful, American-funded prototype built with European engineering expertise. It took three years and enormous expense to get right. Ford failed in 1964 and 1965 while Ferrari continued to win. Then in 1966, Ford swept Le Mans with a 1-2-3 finish — the GT40 Mk II cars of Bruce McLaren/Chris Amon, Ken Miles/Denny Hulme, and Ronnie Bucknum/Dick Hutcherson crossing the finish line together in a display of American dominance that Europe had never seen.
Ford won again in 1967, 1968, and 1969. The 1969 race produced the closest finish in Le Mans history: Jacky Ickx in a Ford GT40 beat Hans Herrmann's Porsche 908 by just 120 meters — after 24 hours and nearly 5,000 km of racing. The margin was less than two seconds.
Ickx's win is doubly famous because he walked to his car at the start rather than running like the other drivers — a protest against the then-standard Le Mans rolling start, which he considered dangerous. He argued that buckling up properly mattered more than getting off the line first. He started last, charged through the field, and won. History proved him right — the running start was abolished the following year.
If the 1960s belonged to Ford and Ferrari, the decades from 1970 onward largely belonged to Porsche. The Stuttgart manufacturer accumulated win after win through successive generations of racing machines — the 917, 936, 956, 962 — in a dynasty of technical excellence unmatched by any other manufacturer in Le Mans history.
The Porsche 917 of 1970 and 1971 remains one of the most iconic racing cars ever built. Driven by Jo Siffert, Pedro Rodríguez, Jackie Oliver, Derek Bell, and others, the 917 was so powerful that early versions were almost undriveable — the aerodynamics were later refined to generate enough downforce to tame the 600 hp flat-12 engine. It won twice at Le Mans and is the car at the heart of Steve McQueen's 1971 film, also called Le Mans.
Derek Bell, a British Porsche works driver, won Le Mans five times — 1975, 1981, 1982, 1986, and 1987. Jacky Ickx won six times for various manufacturers, spending much of his career at the wheel of Porsches. The combination of German engineering precision and race-proven reliability made Porsche the default choice for Le Mans victory throughout this era.
The 1991 Le Mans produced the only outright victory in the race's history by a Japanese manufacturer. Mazda's 787B, powered by a four-rotor Wankel engine producing a unique high-pitched scream that Le Mans fans still recall decades later, won overall in the hands of Johnny Herbert, Bertrand Gachot, and Volker Weidler. The Mazda's rotary engine sound is considered the most distinctive in Le Mans history — immediately recognizable among the crowd of conventional piston engines around it.
Audi's arrival at Le Mans in 2000 began one of the sport's most dominant manufacturer runs. The German brand won with the R8 prototype in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2004 — but the real shock came in 2006 when Audi arrived with the R10 TDI, powered by a turbocharged diesel engine.
Conventional wisdom said diesel was unsuited to endurance racing — too heavy, too slow to respond. Audi's engineers disagreed. The R10 TDI won on its Le Mans debut in 2006, then repeated in 2007 and 2008. A diesel-powered car was winning the world's most prestigious endurance race, doing it more efficiently than gasoline rivals, and covering more distance per fuel stop. It was a complete technological shock.
Tom Kristensen is the defining individual of this era — and the most successful driver in Le Mans history with nine victories: 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, and 2013. The Danish driver, known universally as "Mr. Le Mans," combined extraordinary speed with the kind of consistent, precise racecraft that 24-hour racing rewards above all else. His record of nine wins is unlikely to be broken in any of our lifetimes.
Peugeot challenged Audi between 2007 and 2011, bringing a factory diesel program of their own that pushed Audi to win races it might otherwise have dominated. The Audi vs Peugeot battles produced some of the closest Hypercar racing Le Mans had seen.
Porsche returned to Le Mans in 2014 with the 919 Hybrid — a ground-up prototype using a hybrid powertrain that recovered energy from braking and exhaust heat to power an electric motor on the front axle. Audi followed with hybrid versions of their R18 prototype. Toyota entered with their TS050 Hybrid. The top class was suddenly a battle of the most sophisticated racing cars ever built.
Toyota had been at Le Mans since 1985 in various forms. They were fast, technically impressive, and almost always fast enough to win — but Le Mans denied them year after year. The most painful moment came in 2016, when the Toyota of Kazuki Nakajima, leading by a comfortable margin with just three minutes remaining, suffered a mechanical failure and coasted to a stop on the circuit. The car Nakajima was supposed to finish last-place Porsche drove through to win. Toyota's defeat, captured live on global television, became one of the sport's most heartbreaking moments.
In 2018, Toyota finally won. Fernando Alonso, the two-time Formula 1 World Champion who had joined Toyota for a full Le Mans attempt, drove alongside Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima to win convincingly. For Toyota's engineers and drivers who had chased this victory since the 1980s, it was deeply emotional.
Ferrari had not won Le Mans outright since 1965. Nearly six decades without victory at the race that defined the Maranello brand's motorsport legend in the 1950s and '60s. Then, in 2023, Ferrari entered the new Hypercar class with the 499P — their first purpose-built prototype for Le Mans in decades.
On their debut, Ferrari won. Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi brought the #51 Ferrari 499P home first after a hard-fought 24 hours, ending the longest victory drought in the manufacturer's Le Mans history. The Prancing Horse — the symbol of Le Mans from the golden era — returned to the top step in a moment that had the entire paddock emotional.
Ferrari won again in 2024, confirming their 499P as a genuine benchmark car rather than a fortunate debut. Going into 2026, Ferrari is the team to beat.
| Year | Drivers | Car | Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Antonio Fuoco / Miguel Molina / Nicklas Nielsen | Ferrari 499P | Ferrari AF Corse |
| 2023 | Alessandro Pier Guidi / James Calado / Antonio Giovinazzi | Ferrari 499P | Ferrari AF Corse |
| 2022 | Sébastien Buemi / Brendon Hartley / Ryo Hirakawa | Toyota GR010 Hybrid | Toyota Gazoo Racing |
| 2021 | Kamui Kobayashi / Mike Conway / José María López | Toyota GR010 Hybrid | Toyota Gazoo Racing |
| 2020 | Sébastien Buemi / Kazuki Nakajima / Brendon Hartley | Toyota TS050 Hybrid | Toyota Gazoo Racing |
| 2019 | Sébastien Buemi / Kazuki Nakajima / Fernando Alonso | Toyota TS050 Hybrid | Toyota Gazoo Racing |
| 2018 | Fernando Alonso / Sébastien Buemi / Kazuki Nakajima | Toyota TS050 Hybrid | Toyota Gazoo Racing |
| 2017 | Timo Bernhard / Earl Bamber / Brendon Hartley | Porsche 919 Hybrid | Porsche LMP Team |
| 2016 | Romain Dumas / Neel Jani / Marc Lieb | Porsche 919 Hybrid | Porsche LMP Team |
| 2015 | Nick Tandy / Nick Heidfeld / Earl Bamber | Porsche 919 Hybrid | Porsche LMP Team |
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is one leg of the informal Triple Crown of endurance racing — alongside the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona. While no official Triple Crown award exists, winning all three in a career — let alone a single season — is the ultimate achievement in sports car racing.
The three circuits could not be more different: Daytona's banking and infield road course; Sebring's rough, bumpy former airfield; Le Mans' public road circuit with its ultra-fast straights and wooded sections. No single car or strategy excels at all three. The Triple Crown rewards complete mastery of endurance racing.
The connection between Le Mans and IMSA has never been closer than today. The LMDh formula created cars that compete in both series — meaning the Porsche 963 that races at Sebring in March genuinely is the same car that starts at Le Mans in June. Understanding one race helps you understand the other.