During a pre-race press conference for the Formula One French Grand Prix on Thursday, humanity’s hero and one true savior Fernando Alonso said, verbatim, that his recent overall win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans was “a higher level than any other victory in Le Mans.” Yes, the Le Mans that’s been around since 1923.
Getting to complete my photography bucket list didn’t come easy. For years I’ve bothered Jalopnik Editor-in-Chief Patrick George to get me there, but it ain’t cheap, and credentials for the 24 Hours of Le Mans are not easy to obtain for anyone. Finally this year the stars aligned, and I made my way down to France for…
The 24 Hours of Le Mans might not have had the riveting action like we expected it to thanks to some lame new rules, but at least one battle for the win did get interesting after the race ended. Officials disqualified the winning team in Le Mans’ second-tier class, over an illegal device to speed up pit stops.
This year Toyota capped off what looks like the end of the modern LMP1 era, from Audi vs everybody to Audi vs Peugeot to Audi vs Porsche to Porsche vs Toyota to Toyota vs itself. Among all of these vehicles, let’s remember the one that most sounded like a pod racer: the Toyota TS030.
Motorsport renaissance man and two-time Formula One world champ Fernando Alonso was part of the winning No. 8 Toyota TS050 team that finally—after years of almost winning and absolute heartbreak—won Le Mans. Now that he’s got two of the three wins for the Triple Crown of Motorsport, it’s obvious where he’s heading…
This year, during the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, artist and photographer Jayson Fong sat down to his desk to produce one piece of art for each hour of the race. A motorsport fanatic of the first degree, Jayson’s art is usually quite detailed. For this endeavor, however, he needed to finish a piece quite quickly, and it…
There are a lot of awful rule sets in the world of racing, but this season the ACO and the FIA have combined to produce what is perhaps the worst rule in racing history. While the rule was technically implemented at the 6-hour race at Spa last month, the full extent of its impact on endurance racing was shown in stark…
Corvette drivers Jan Magnussen, Antonio Garcia, and Mike Rockenfeller took their bright yellow America-on-wheels Chevrolet to fifth in the GTE Pro class, classified 21st overall. They didn’t win, but just surviving Le Mans is enough to warrant a big ‘ole smoke show. Nothing could make me prouder to have been born…
After years of trying and failing, the No. 8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid has finally taken the Le Mans victory the team has so desperately wanted. In doing so, Toyota has become only the second Japanese manufacturer in history to win the race overall, following on from Mazda’s 1991 victory. While Audi and Porsche both quit…
Porsche celebrated its 70th anniversary this year with utter domination of both GT classes at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Porsche’s beloved “pink pig” livery finally redeemed itself with a commanding win of LMGTE Pro, and that’s on top of the No. 77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR winning the LMGTE Am class.
With a little over an hour and a half to go, the No. 7 Toyota TS050 slowed abruptly from second place. Sure, 13 laps separated it from the next car given that the Toyotas are that much quicker than the privateer LMP1 teams, but you have to finish the race to be classified—as Toyota knows painfully after their leading…
Tired yet? The road used for the 24 Hours of Le Mans just gave everybody a good chance to make another pot of coffee because it’s kind of falling apart. A drain cover came loose, so cars circulated behind a safety car Sunday morning while race personnel tack the cover down more securely.
It’s early in the morning at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and in case you didn’t pick it up from the cutaways to sleeping crew members, folks are clearly a bit tired. This morning started off with a few major crashes ‘n’ bashes. One of the unlucky cars that had to retire was one of the brand new BMW M8 GTEs as it was on…
We didn’t so much cruise through the night at the Circuit de la Sarthe so much as we stumbled through it, crashing toward daybreak in a smoldering blaze of not-quite-glory. We’ve had fires. We’ve had crashes. We’ve had some drivers capitalizing on the shenanigans. Welcome to Le Mans.
Our photographer Kurt Bradley is hard at work on the scene at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans—and while he’s busy snapping away, I’m here to share some of his fantastic photographic highlights from the first half of the race and keep y’all updated on what’s happening on track. It’ll be just like you’re there at the…
Bad news for the Fernando Alonso Hype Train: the car he’s sharing with Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima just served a 60-second time penalty, which means that the formerly-leading car came out in second place, two minutes behind the Toyota being driven by Mike Conway.
Racing the 24 Hours of Le Mans is such a monolithic effort that just getting to the starting grid is a challenge. That was especially true for Core Autosport this year, which had to pretty much start over at the last minute after one of its cars got wrecked in qualifying.
When the World Endurance Championship announced its partnership with US broadcaster Velocity, the future of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in America seemed a little more promising. No more channel hopping. No more inconvenient interruptions or push-backs from Fox, who didn’t quite seem to grasp the fact that Le Mans is …