24 Hours of Le Mans - Purpose

Purpose

At a time when Grand Prix racing was the dominant form of motorsport throughout Europe, Le Mans was designed to present a different test. Instead of focusing on the ability of a car company to build the fastest machines, the 24 Hours of Le Mans would instead concentrate on the ability of manufacturers to build sporty yet reliable cars. This encouraged innovation in producing reliable and fuel-efficient vehicles, because the nature of endurance racing requires cars that last the distance and spend as little time in the pits as possible.

At the same time, due to the layout of the Le Mans track, a need was created for cars to have better aerodynamics and stability at high speeds. While this was shared with Grand Prix racing, few tracks in Europe had straights of a length comparable to the Mulsanne. The fact that the road is public and therefore not maintained to the same quality as some permanent racing circuits also put more of a strain on parts, putting greater emphasis on reliability.

The demand for fuel economy created by the oil crisis in the early 1970s led the race organisers to adopt a fuel economy formula known as Group C, in which the amount of fuel each car was allowed to use during the race was limited. Although Group C was abandoned when teams were able to master the fuel formulae, fuel economy was still important to some teams as alternative fuel sources appeared in the early 21st century, attempting to overcome time spent during pit stops.

These technological innovations have had a trickle-down effect, with technology used at Le Mans finding its way into production cars several years later. This has also led to faster and more exotic supercars due to manufacturers wishing to develop faster road cars for the purposes of developing them into even faster GT cars.