The 83rd 24 Hours of Le Mans () was a 24-hour automobile endurance event for teams of three drivers each entering Le Mans Prototype and Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance cars held from 10 to 14 June 2015 at the Circuit de la Sarthe, close to Le Mans, France. It was the 83rd running of the 24 Hour race organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest as well as the third round of the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship. A test day was held two weeks prior to the race on 31 May. A record-breaking 263,500 people attended the event.
A Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Neel Jani, Romain Dumas, and Marc Lieb started from pole position after Jani broke the circuit's lap record in qualifying. The race was won by the sister Porsche of Nick Tandy and Le Mans rookies Earl Bamber and Nico Hülkenberg, followed a lap behind by a third Porsche shared by Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard. Audi's best car, driven by the title defenders Benoît Tréluyer, Marcel Fässler, and André Lotterer, finished third, a further lap behind the two Porsche vehicles. This was the seventeenth overall victory for Porsche, their first since .
The LMP2 category was won by the KCMG Oreca-Nissan driven by Richard Bradley, Matthew Howson, and Nicolas Lapierre. The trio led all but nine laps of the race but only held a 48-second lead over the Jota Sport Gibson-Nissan at the race's end. Corvette Racing won their first class victory since despite one of their two cars being withdrawn after an accident in qualifying. Oliver Gavin, Tommy Milner, and Jordan Taylor held a five-lap margin in LMGTE Pro over the AF Corse Ferrari in second, after breaking away from the rest of the field in the second half of the race. The LMGTE Am class was led for most of the time by the No. 98 Aston Martin until driver Paul Dalla Lana crashed in the Ford Chicane in the final hour of the race, handing the victory to the SMP Racing Ferrari of Viktor Shaytar, Aleksey Basov, and Andrea Bertolini.
The result meant Lotterer, Tréluyer and Fässler remained the leaders of the Drivers' Championship on 80 points, 20 ahead of Tandy, and a further two in front of his co-drivers Bamber and Hülkenberg. Dumas, Jani and Lieb dropped from second to fourth and Bernhard, Hartley and Webber stood in fifth place. Porsche became the new leaders of the Manufacturers' Championship with 140 points; Audi were 16 points behind their nearest rivals with Toyota 69 points adrift in third with five races left in the season.
Schedule and pre-championship standings The 2015 Le Mans schedule was confirmed in an FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting in Munich on 26 June 2014. It was the 83rd running of the event, and the third of eight scheduled rounds of the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship. Before the race Audi Sport Team Joest drivers André Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer and Marcel Fässler led the Drivers' Championship with 50 points, 14 ahead of their nearest rivals Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb and a further 14 in front of third-placed Mike Conway, Stéphane Sarrazin and Alexander Wurz. Anthony Davidson and Sébastien Buemi were fourth on 19 points, and Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber stood in fifth place with 17 points. Audi were leading the Manufacturers' Championship with 70 points, 17 ahead of their rival Porsche in second; the third-place manufacturer Toyota had scored 47 points. Audi had so far dominated the season by winning the first two races of the campaign. Dumas, Jani and Lieb had twice finished in second while Davidson and Buemi along with Bernhard, Hartley and Webber had achieved third-place results.
Circuit and regulation changes
Following the introduction of slow zones during the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans, the race's organiser, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) revised the system for 2015. The limited speed in the zones was increased from to . The number of zones around the circuit had also increased from 19 to 35, with a new lighting system to assist marshals added to each zone. Le Mans Prototype (LMP) teams were also required to carry additional flashing rain lights from Le Mans onward following a collision between two prototype cars in the rain at 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps caused by low visibility.
Modifications were made to the circuit from Mulsanne Corner to the Corvette Curves. The circuit was widened on the road connecting Mulsanne to Indianapolis, and again from Indianapolis to the Porsche Curves, although the kerbs remained in their previous locations. The first corner of the Porsche Curves had a larger run-off area on the outside while SAFER barriers had been installed on the inside wall. The Corvette corner also now featured a gravel run-off.
Entries
Automatic invitations Automatic entry invitations were earned by teams that won their class in the previous running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, or won championships in other Le Mans-based series such as the IMSA SportsCar Championship (IMSA), the European Le Mans Series (ELMS), and the Asian Le Mans Series (ALMS). Some championship runners-up were also granted automatic invitations in certain series. All current FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) full-season entries also automatically earned invitations. As invitations were granted to teams, they were allowed to change their cars from the previous year to the next, but not allowed to change their category. In the ELMS, the "Le Mans" Grand Touring Endurance (LMGTE) class champion and runner-up were allowed to choose between the Pro and Am categories, while the GTC class champion was limited solely to an Am entry. The 2014 ALMS GTC competitors were also limited to the LMGTE Am class.
The ACO announced its initial list of automatic entries on 15 December 2014.
+Automatic entries for the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans Reason invited LMP1 LMP2 LMGTE Pro LMGTE Am 1st in the 24 Hours of Le Mans Audi Sport Team Joest Jota Sport AF Corse Aston Martin Racing 1st in the European Le Mans Series Signatech Alpine SMP Racing 2nd in the European Le Mans Series AF Corse 1st in the European Le Mans Series GTC category SMP Racing IMSA SportsCar Championship at-large entries Wayne Taylor Racing Scuderia Corsa 1st in the Asian Le Mans Series OAK Racing Team Total Team AAI 2nd in the Asian Le Mans Series Team AAI
Entry list
In conjunction with the announcement of entries for the 2015 FIA WEC and the ELMS seasons, the ACO announced the full 56 car entry list for Le Mans, plus seven reserves. In addition to the 35 guaranteed entries from the FIA WEC, 13 entries came from the ELMS, three from IMSA, two from the ALMS, while the rest of the field was filled with one-off entries only competing at Le Mans.
Reserves Seven reserves were initially nominated by the ACO, limited to the LMP2 and LMGTE Am categories. Algarve Pro Racing withdrew their reserve LMP2 entry, while Riley Motorsports was promoted from the reserve list when the second SARD-Morand entry withdrew from the FIA WEC. Five reserves remained on the list: A second KCMG LMP2, a second Ibañez LMP2, a third Proton Porsche, and the Formula Racing Ferrari and Gulf Racing Porsche.
Testing and practice A pre-Le Mans testing day was held at the circuit on 31 May, involving all 56 entries as well as the KCMG Oreca-Nissan, Ibañez Oreca-Nissan, Gulf Racing Porsche, and Formula Racing Ferrari reserve entries. Two LMP3 class Ginetta vehicles and two additional AF Corse Ferrari cars also participated. The two four-hour sessions were held under mixed weather conditions as rain swept through the area several times. Neel Jani set the fastest time in the early session with a 3:21.945 for the No. 18 Porsche, but Hartley improved to a 3:21.061 in the sister No. 17 Porsche. Audi's best time was a 3:22.307 lap for Marco Bonanomi in the No. 9 car, while Toyota could only muster a 3:25.321 lap. Laurens Vanthoor was the fastest LMP2 driver in the No. 34 OAK Ligier-Honda. Darren Turner's No. 97 Aston Martin was quickest in LMGTE Pro while Pedro Lamy helped Aston Martin also lead in LMGTE Am. The session served as the first appearance for the trio of Nissan GT-R LM Nismo amongst its World Endurance Championship competitors, although the cars were not on pace with the LMP1 field. After the test several prototype teams, including all Audi, Porsche, Toyota and Nissan cars participated in an unofficial test on the shorter Bugatti Circuit the following day to ensure car components were working efficiently before the race.
Four hours of practice were held for the field on Wednesday afternoon, but again suffered from variable wet-weather throughout. The No. 17 Porsche once again led the session although Webber was the fastest driver to set the 3:21.362 lap time. Audi closed to within half a second with Loïc Duval's 3:21.950 lap. The LMP2 category had only a single car manage a lap under three minutes and 40 seconds when Richard Bradley set a 3:39.897 lap, a full second ahead of the No. 34 OAK Ligier-Honda. The KCMG car had earlier caused the session to be red flagged when the car came to a stop at the first Mulsanne Straight chicane. The Murphy Prototypes Oreca-Nissan later caused a second stoppage when Mark Patterson spun in the Porsche Curves entry and heavily impacted the safety barrier. Patterson was unhurt. The LMGTE Pro category was again led by Aston Martin, Richie Stanaway's No. 99 car setting a 3:55.895 lap, followed by the No. 64 Corvette and the No. 97 Aston Martin. Mathias Lauda kept the No. 98 Aston Martin ahead in LMGTE Am, nearly two seconds ahead of the two Proton Porsche cars.
Qualifying The first dry session of the week occurred on Wednesday night in the first of three qualifying sessions to set the race's starting order with the fastest lap times set by each team's quickest driver. The first timed laps of the session immediately saw the qualifying record for the track, in its current configuration, broken. Bernhard's first timed lap of 3:17.767 in the No. 17 Porsche broke the record by nearly a second, only to be followed by Jani in the No. 18 Porsche with a 3:16.887 lap time. Neither driver improved their times over the rest of the session, giving the No. 18 Porsche provisional pole position, followed in third by the remaining Porsche 919. The Audi trio followed, with Duval leading the group but nearly three seconds off the pole pace. Toyota's best effort came from Sarrazin in the No. 2 car, nearly two seconds adrift of the Audi's lap times. Nissan's lap times improved to a 3:38.468, but were over twenty seconds off the pole position time.
The fastest LMP2 lap time was also set early in the session, with Richard Bradley recording a 3:38.032 time in the KCMG Oreca-Nissan, nearly a full second ahead of the Greaves Motorsport Gibson-Nissan. The Greaves car, driven by rookie Gaëtan Paletou, later caused the session's only stoppage when it collided with the safety barriers at Mulsanne Corner and had to be towed back to the garage. Aston Martin dominated the LMGTE categories in the first qualifying session, with four of their five entries leading the overall positions in the category. Stanaway set the fastest time of 3:54.928 in the No. 99 car, while Pedro Lamy was the fastest Amateur category entry with a 3:55.102 lap to be second fastest among all LMGTE cars. Gianmaria Bruni's AF Corse Ferrari was third amongst LMGTEs before ACO officials disallowed their fastest lap times for going beyond the track limits, demoting the car down the grid. The two remaining LMGTE Pro Aston Martin drivers followed the dual class pole sitters, with Corvette the first car from another marque.