The 92nd 24 Hours of Le Mans () was an automobile endurance race for teams of three drivers each racing Le Mans Prototypes (LMP) and Le Mans Grand Touring Car (LMGT3) cars held from 15 to 16 June 2024 at the Circuit de la Sarthe, near Le Mans, France. The Automobile Club de l'Ouest's 92nd 24-hour race drew 329,000 spectators and was the fourth round of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship. There was a test day on 9 June, a week before the event.
Kévin Estre, André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor's Porsche 963 from Porsche Penske Motorsport started from pole position after Estre achieved the fastest overall lap time in the Le Mans Hypercar category in the Hyperpole session. Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen's Ferrari 499P of Ferrari AF Corse took the overall victory after 311 laps. It was Fuoco, Molina, and Nielsen's first overall Le Mans victory, Ferrari's second consecutive win, and the Italian marque's 11th. Nyck de Vries, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López finished second in a Toyota GR010 Hybrid, duelling with the race winners in the final two hours. The sister Ferrari AF Corse team of James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi were third overall. A record number of cars, nine, finished on the lead lap.
United Autosports's Bijoy Garg, Oliver Jarvis and Nolan Siegel shared an Oreca 07-Gibson car and led the last two hours of the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class, giving the team its second category victory after . Inter Europol Competition's trio of Vladislav Lomko, Clément Novalak and Jakub Śmiechowski finished 18.6 seconds behind in second place, with IDEC Sport's Reshad de Gerus, Paul Lafargue and Job van Uitert taking third. In the first LMGT3 race at Le Mans, the Manthey EMA team of Richard Lietz, Morris Schuring and Yasser Shahin in a Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) won the category by one lap ahead over Team WRT's Augusto Farfus, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung, who shared a BMW M4 GT3.
The Porsche Penske trio of Estre, Lotterer and Vanthoor remained atop the Hypercar Drivers' Championship with 99 points; their advantage was cut to nine points by race winners Fuoco, Molina and Nielsen, who moved from fifth to second. Lietz, Shahin, Schuring became the joint leaders of the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Drivers with Manthey PureRxcing's Klaus Bachler, Alex Malykhin and Joel Sturm. Porsche, the 12 Hertz Team Jota and the No. 91 Manthey EMA teams left Le Mans as the Hypercar World Endurance Championship, World Cup for Hypercar Teams and Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Teams leaders with four races remaining in the season.
Background The Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), the promoter of the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance motor race, announced the 2024 dates in June 2023. The race took place on 15 and 16 June at the Circuit de la Sarthe close to the city of Le Mans in the French department of Sarthe. It was the 92nd running of the race since its inception in , and the fourth round of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Before the race, Porsche Penske Motorsport's Kévin Estre, André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor led the Hypercar Drivers' Championship with 74 points, 22 more than Team Jota's Callum Ilott and Will Stevens, who were six points ahead of Toyota's Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries. In the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Drivers, Manthey PureRxcing's Klaus Bachler, Alex Malykhin and Joel Sturm led Team WRT's Augusto Farfus, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung and Heart of Racing Team's Ian James, Daniel Mancinelli and Alex Riberas by 35 points each. Porsche led Toyota by 23 points in the Hypercar World Endurance Championship, Hertz Team Jota led AF Corse by nine points in the World Cup for Hypercar Teams and Manthey PureRxcing led Team WRT and Heart of Racing Team by 35 points in the Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Teams.
Regulation and circuit changes A new Le Mans Grand Touring Car (LMGT3) category, with regulations based on the global GT3-specification of cars intended to reduce costs and ensure Le Mans was more affordable for participants, replaced the ageing Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Am (LMGTE Am) class as the race's production-based car category. Cars were modified to comply with WEC standards, and the class follows pro-am rules, which require teams to sign at least one Bronze-rated driver and one extra Bronze or Silver-rated driver. Although the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category was removed from the WEC due to an increase in Le Mans Hypercar (Hypercar) entrants, it was retained for Le Mans, although entries would not earn championship points because they do not compete full-time in the WEC.
Following criticism that race restarts were too protracted following the end of a safety car procedure in , the system was slightly modified to remove the "drop-back" feature that combined all three classes. As a result, at a restart, all classes would be mixed together to try to avoid ending duels and shorten the procedure. To bring the race in line with the rest of the WEC season, the ACO prohibited the heating of tyres through the use of tyre warmers prior to their installation onto a car, after an exception was granted for 2023 as a result of multiple accidents at the 2023 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, where several cars on cold tyres crashed in cool conditions. An exception to the tyre warmer ban was considered but not implemented.
In September 2023, the public organisation Syndicat Mixte des 24 Heures du Mans resurfaced the road between Mulsanne and Arnage corners for the first time since in order to improve technical compliance for Le Mans sports cars on the circuit.
Entries The event's registration period was from 7 December 2023 to 13 February 2024. The ACO Selection Committee issued 62 invites, with entries divided between the Hypercar, LMP2, and LMGT3 categories.
Automatic entries Teams that won championships in the European Le Mans Series (ELMS), Asian Le Mans Series (ALMS) and GT World Challenge Europe's (GTWCE) combined Endurance and Sprint Bronze Cup championships received automatic invitations. The 2023 ELMS LMP2 championship runner-up also received an automatic invitation. Unlike previous years, Le Mans Cup entrants were not invited, while the 2023–24 ALMS LMP3 champion received a priority invitation to the Road to Le Mans support race. All current WEC full-season entries were automatically invited. The ACO selected three IMSA SportsCar Championship (IMSA) participants as automatic entries, with one invited to the Hypercar category at IMSA's discretion and the other two to the LMP2 and LMGTE classes. The ELMS LMGTE team that earned automatic entry could only enter in LMGT3 while its LMP3 champion had to enter an LMP2 car.
IInvitations were provided if the car was entered in the ALMS, ELMS, or IMSA series for 2024 and only if the entrant competed in all events in their respective championships. No competitor could accrue more than two invitations in each category combined and invitations were not transferable to another entrant. The ACO announced the full list of automatic entries on 12 February 2024. Algarve Pro Racing declined their automatic invitation as winners of the 2023–24 ALMS LMP2 category because they wanted to focus on running two cars at Le Mans and not risk compromising quality with three entries. Pure Rxcing also declined their automatic invitations for winning both the 2023 GTWCE Bronze Cup and the 2023–24 ALMS GT title. As a result, neither the ALMS runners-up in Proton Competition (LMP2) nor Triple Eight JMR (GT) received invitations.
+Automatic entries for the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans Reason invited Hypercar LMP2 LMGT3 1st in the European Le Mans Series (LMP2 and LMGTE) Algarve Pro Racing Proton Competition 2nd in the European Le Mans Series (LMP2) United Autosports 1st in the European Le Mans Series (LMP2 Pro-Am) AF Corse 1st in the European Le Mans Series (LMP3) Cool Racing IMSA SportsCar Championship at-large entries Whelen Cadillac Racing George Kurtz Brendan Iribe 1st in the Asian Le Mans Series (LMP2 and GT) CrowdStrike Racing by APR Pure Rxcing 1st in the GT World Challenge Europe (Bronze Cup) Pure Rxcing Source:
Entry list and reserves
The ACO announced the full 62 car entry list on 19 February 2024. In addition to the 37 guaranteed WEC entries, there were 17 ELMS entries, seven WTSC entries, no ALMS entries, and a single one-off Le Mans entry. There were 39 cars in the two Prototype classes and 23 in the LMGT3 category. There was no successful applications for the Garage 56 concept. In addition to the 62 entries invited, seven (one from Hypercar and three each from LMP2 and LMGT3) were placed on a reserve list to replace withdrawn or declined invites. Reserve entries were ordered, with the first one replacing the first withdrawal from the race, regardless of class. Entries were selected for their sporting quality, technical, fan, media and public interest and commitment, loyalty to other ACO-administered series and entrant's performance.
On May 6, 2024, a revised entry list was published with all driver lineups. The ACO did not promote any reserves for the race, which was reduced from seven to five cars after Formula Racing's Ferrari 296 GT3 and Richard Mille by TDS's Oreca 07-Gibson LMP2 car withdrew. By the start of test day, three reserves remained on the list: a second Proton Competition Porsche 963, and one Oreca LMP2 car each from Inter Europol Competition and Staysail Motorsport.
Pre-race balance of performance changes The balance of performance was changed to try to ensure parity within all three classes, and the race marked the debut of the WEC's Power Gain system, which adjusts a car's maximum power over two speed thresholds to try to create more parity. The Alpine A424, BMW M Hybrid V8, Isotta Fraschini Tipo 6 LMH-C, Toyota GR010 Hybrid were the four Hypercars with increased powerwhile Ferrari 499P, the Lamborghini SC63, the Peugeot 9X8 had their power reduced. Neither the Cadillac V-Series.R nor the Porsche 963 received any power alternations. All nine LMGT3 cars had ballast added to affect their handling. The Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, the Ferrari 296 GT3, the Ford Mustang GT3, the Lexus RC F GT3 the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo 2 and the Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) all received power increases to improve performance while the BMW M4 GT3 and the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo did not.
Testing All entrants were required to drive for six hours in two sessions one week before the race, on 9 June. Some teams allowed reserve drivers to test in place of regular drivers who had other obligations. Scott Dixon, Romain Grosjean, Álex Palou, Nolan Siegel and Kyffin Simpson missed testing to compete in the IndyCar Series race at Road America. Midway through the opening session, Jack Aitken, Mirko Bortolotti, René Rast, Kelvin van der Linde, Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann completed their running and left Le Mans to compete in the second Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters race at Circuit Zandvoort. Frederik Vesti only drove in the second session since he was serving as Mercedes's Formula One reserve driver at the .