Circuit de la Sarthe

The Circuit des 24 Heures runs south out of Le Mans, in the Sarthe department of Pays de la Loire, and crosses into the communes of Mulsanne and Arnage before turning back on itself. The full configuration measures 13.626 kilometres over thirty-eight turns, run clockwise. About three quarters of it is public road — the Route Départementale D338 among others — carrying ordinary traffic for the rest of the year; the circuit proper exists for roughly ten days out of every twelve months. That is the thing people underestimate about a lap here. It is not a racetrack with a long straight. It is a piece of the French road network that a race is allowed to borrow.

A lap opens with the Dunlop Curve and its bridge, drops through the Esses to Tertre Rouge, and from there onto the Ligne Droite des Hunaudières — the Mulsanne Straight, broken since 1990 by two roughly evenly spaced chicanes that exist because the cars had got too fast for an uninterrupted run. Mulsanne Corner turns the lap back towards Indianapolis and Arnage, and then come the Porsche Curves, added in 1972, and the Ford Chicanes, added before the 1968 race, which deliver the cars back to the line. Tertre Rouge matters more than its size suggests: get it wrong and you carry the mistake for the entire length of the Mulsanne.

First run in 1923, the Circuit de la Sarthe is the holy ground of endurance racing — 13.6 kilometres of permanent track and closed public road, where the 24 Hours of Le Mans has crowned legends for a century. It would be the championship’s ultimate test of car and crew: the Mulsanne at over 300 km/h, the Porsche Curves at dawn, the long night.

A weekend on the road to glory: the Dunlop chicane, the Mulsanne straight at full stretch, the Ford Chicanes onto the line — bookended by the Sarthe countryside and the cathedral of Le Mans.

The first 24 Hours of Le Mans was run on 26 May 1923, organised by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, a club founded in 1906 and still the race’s promoter today. The circuit has been cut and re-cut around the event ever since — the Ford Chicanes before 1968, the Porsche Curves in 1972, the Mulsanne chicanes before 1990 — each change a response to cars that had outgrown the road. Beyond the 24 Hours, the full circuit also carries Le Mans Classic; the shorter Bugatti layout inside it hosts the venue’s motorcycle racing. No other venue asks a GT car for everything at once: top speed, aerodynamic stability, brakes, fuel, and a crew that can still make decisions at four in the morning.

Official circuit website →