The 81st 24 Hours of Le Mans (French: 81e 24 Heures du Mans) was a 24-hour automobile endurance racing event for teams of three drivers entering Le Mans Prototype and Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance cars held from 19 to 23 June 2013 at the Circuit de la Sarthe close to Le Mans, France. It was the 81st running of the event, as organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) since 1923. The race was the third and the premier round of the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship, with 32 of the race's 56 entries contesting the championship. A test day was held two weeks prior to the race on 9 June. Approximately 245,000 spectators attended the event.
The race was won by an Audi R18 e-tron quattro shared by Dane Tom Kristensen, Brit Allan McNish and Frenchman Loïc Duval after it led the last 248 laps, taking the manufacturers' twelfth victory at Le Mans since its first in the 2000 edition. It was Kristensen's ninth victory, McNish's third and Duval's first. The car started from pole position but lost the lead at the start to the sister No. 1 Audi of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer who traded the position with a Toyota TS030 Hybrid shared by Anthony Davidson, Stéphane Sarrazin and Sébastien Buemi under pit stop rotation until it was forced into the pit lane in the seventh hour with a crankshaft position sensor fault. Buemi, Davidson and Sarrazin finished second and Lucas di Grassi, Marc Gené and Oliver Jarvis in another Audi completed the race podium.
The Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category finished with the OAK Racing Morgan car of Bertrand Baguette, Martin Plowman and Ricardo González ahead of the sister entry of Alex Brundle, David Heinemeier Hansson and Olivier Pla by a distance of one lap. The class podium was completed by Greaves Motorsport's Zytek Z11SN, driven by Michael Krumm, Jann Mardenborough and Lucas Ordóñez. One of Porsche's Manthey Racing 991 RSR of Romain Dumas, Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz won the Le Mans Grand Touring Professional (LMGTE Pro) class and the sister No. 91 vehicle of Jörg Bergmeister, Timo Bernhard and Patrick Pilet in second. Porsche also won the Le Mans Grand Touring Amateur (LMGTE Am) category with the No. 76 IMSA Performance Matmut car of Raymond Narac, Christophe Bourret and Jean-Karl Vernay, earning the marque its 100th class victory at Le Mans.
The result elevated Kristensen, McNish and Duval to the top of the Drivers' Championship with 94 points. The championship leaders going into the race, Lotterer, Fässler and Tréluyer fell to second while Davidson, Sarrazin and Buemi maintained third due to the trio's second-place finish. Di Grassi, Gené and Jarvis moved from sixth to fourth and the duo of Alexander Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre rounded out the top five. With 102 points, Audi increased their lead over Toyota in the Manufacturers' Championship to 35 points with five rounds left in the season.
Background
The 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans was moved forward one week after a request was filed by the world governing body of motorsport, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), in order to harmonise the 2013 motor racing calendar. It was the 81st annual edition of the event, as well as the third of eight automobile endurance races in the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship. Going into the race, Audi Sport Team Joest drivers André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer led the Drivers' Championship with 44 points, one ahead of their teammates Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Loïc Duval in second. Anthony Davidson, Stéphane Sarrazin and Sébastien Buemi of Toyota were third with 27 points. Rebellion Racing's Neel Jani, Nico Prost and Nick Heidfeld were fourth with 20 points, and their teammates Andrea Belicchi, Mathias Beche and Cheng Congfu were fifth with 16 points. In the Manufacturers' Championship, Audi (with 51 points) led their rivals Toyota by 20 points.
Balance of Performance changes The FIA Endurance Committee altered the balance of performance in three of the four categories to try and create parity in the classes. All hybrid and non-hybrid petrol powered LMP1 (Le Mans Prototype 1) cars received an additional of fuel capacity for improved fuel mileage, allowing the Toyota TS030 Hybrid to run with a fuel tank and the Rebellion Racing Lola B12/60s and the Strakka Racing HPD ARX-03c had fuel tanks. Porsche received an increase in performance by allowing a larger air restrictor on the air intake of their engines in the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Professional (LMGTE Pro) and Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Amateur (LMGTE Am) classes. Aston Martin had of ballast added to its LMGTE Pro Vantage while the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R received a reduction in weight. The Ferrari 458 Italia GT2 and the SRT Viper GTS-R had no performance changes.
Entries The automotive group Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) granted 56 invitations to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Entries were divided between the LMP1, LMP2 (Le Mans Prototype 2), LMGTE Pro and LMGTE Am categories. By the deadline for entries on 16 January, 71 applications had been filed with the ACO.
Automatic entries
Automatic entries were earned by teams which won their class in the previous running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, or had won Le Mans-based series and events such as the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), European Le Mans Series (ELMS), and the Petit Le Mans. Some second-place finishers were also granted automatic entries in certain series. Entries were also granted for the winners of the Michelin Energy Endurance Challenge in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). A final entry was granted to the champion in the ELMS' Formula Le Mans category, with the winner receiving their invitation in LMP2. For the first time, champions in the ALMS or at the Petit Le Mans did not automatically receive an entry. Instead, the ALMS was given three "at-large" entries, which the series awarded to teams who were interested in participating at Le Mans. As automatic entries were granted to teams, the teams could change their cars from the previous year to the next, but were not allowed to change their category. However, automatic invitations in the two GTE categories could be swapped between the two based on the driver line-ups chosen by these teams.
On 14 November 2012, the list of automatic entries was announced by the ACO. JMB Racing and Conquest Racing were the two teams who chose not to accept their automatic invitations as they did not run in any series during the 2013 season.
+Automatic entries for the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans Reason Entered LMP1 LMP2 LMGTE Pro LMGTE Am 1st in the 24 Hours of Le Mans Audi Sport Team Joest Starworks Motorsport AF Corse Larbre Compétition 1st in the European Le Mans Series Thiriet by TDS Racing JMW Motorsport IMSA Performance Matmut 2nd in the European Le Mans Series OAK Racing JMB Racing AF Corse American Le Mans Series at-large entries Level 5 Motorsports Conquest Racing Extreme Speed Motorsports 1st in FIA WEC Michelin Green X Challenge Audi Sport Team Joest AF Corse 1st in European Le Mans Series FLM category Boutsen Ginion Racing
Entry list
In conjunction with the announcement of entries for the WEC and the ELMS, the ACO announced the full 56 car entry list and ten vehicle reserve list during a press conference at the Eurosites George V in Paris on 1 February. In addition to the 32 guaranteed entries from the WEC, ten entries came from the ELMS and eight from the ALMS, while the rest of the field was filled with one-off entries competing only at Le Mans.
Garage 56 The ACO continued the Garage 56 concept that was started in the 2012 race. Garage 56 allows a 56th entry to the race, using the rigors of the 24 Hours of Le Mans to test new technology. The ACO announced during 2012 that the Swiss-developed GreenGT vehicle had been granted the Garage 56 entry for the 2013 edition. The GreenGT LMP-H2 utilizes a hydrogen fuel cell to run electric motors within an open-top Le Mans Prototype style body. Three weeks before the race, GreenGT withdrew their entry, citing a lack of time to complete the complex fine-tuning of the hydrogen fuel cell system. No reserve was available for the 56th garage.
Reserves
Ten reserves were initially nominated by the ACO, limited to the LMP2 and both of the LMGTE categories. Extreme Speed Motorsports withdrew their Ferrari 458 Italia GT2 on 1 March, following a late switch to the ALMS' P2 category. This promoted the 98 Aston Martin Racing Vantage to the race entry as a result and the car was moved from LMGTE Am to the LMGTE Pro class to bring the number of Aston Martins in the event to five. Two weeks later, Sébastien Loeb Racing withdrew its Oreca 03-Nissan because of financial troubles, promoting the No. 34 Race Performance Oreca-Judd entry from the reserves. Starworks Motorsport, defending champions of Le Mans and the FIA WEC in the LMP2 category, withdrew their HPD-Honda entry on 9 April due to a lack of funding from sponsors, promoting Morand Racing's Morgan-Judd.
Ten days later, Gulf Racing Middle East withdrew the second of its Lola-Nissan B12/80s and DKR Engineering's Lola-Judd replaced the entry. On 21 May, the ACO released a revised entry list that confirmed the withdrawal of Extreme Speed Motorsport's Ferrari 458 Italia, Sébastien Loeb Racing's Oreca 03-Nissan, Starworks Motorsports' HPD-Honda and Gulf Racing Middle East's Lola-Nissan B12/80 from the 24 Hours of Le Mans. On 1 June, GreenGT Technologies announced the withdrawal of the Garage 56 entry, with Prospeed Competition's LMGTE Am Porsche 911 GT3 RSR being announced as its replacement. By the start of the event, only a single reserve entry had not been promoted to the race.
Testing and practice
A test day was held on 9 June, two weeks prior to the race, and required all entrants for the race to participate in eight hours of track time divided into two sessions. All 56 entries were involved as well as a fourth Audi R18 e-tron quattro driven by Marco Bonanomi for 2014 tyre testing, a Signatech Alpine A450 for Paul-Loup Chatin and Tristan Gommendy and a spare Level 5 Motorsports HPD ARX-03b tested by Scott Tucker. Two Team Endurance Challenge-entered Le Mans Prototype Challenge Oreca-FLM09s also participated. Wet weather swept the area during the day and had Audi set the fastest time with a 3:22.583 lap from Duval in the No. 2 car at the end of the second session. Lucas di Grassi in the sister No. 3 entry followed in second and Lotterer completed an all-Audi top three lockout in third. Toyota placed fourth and sixth with its best times coming from Sarrazin and Alexander Wurz; they were separated by Bonanomi's Audi. During the first session, Duval was distracted by an unidentified object hitting his windscreen and heavily damaged the No. 2 car in the wall alongside the track at Tertre Rouge corner leading onto the Mulsanne Straight. Olivier Pla's OAK Racing Morgan-Nissan was the fastest LMP2 car with a late second session effort of 3:38.801 and he was eight-tenths of a second faster than Nelson Panciatici's Signatech Alpine. LMGTE Pro was topped by Peter Dumbreck for Aston Martin Racing while Jamie Campbell-Walter also helped the marque lead in LMGTE Am. Crashes from Tracy Krohn of Krohn Racing at the right of Mulsanne corner, AF Corse's Giancarlo Fisichella leaving the same turn and Dominik Kraihamer for Lotus in the Porsche Curves led to stoppages during both sessions.