Automakers Are Crashing Toyota’s Le Mans Party

For the first time since 2017, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France will feature a handful of cars from the major automakers this weekend, competing for the top prize. Toyota, which has won the last five years as the only big automaker, now faces a crowded field.

Fighting for overall victory will also be factory-backed cars from Cadillac, Peugeot and Porsche, along with independent entries from Glickenhaus, Vanwall, Jota and Action Express Racing. But headlining it all is the return of Ferrari, which has not been in the top class, now called Hypercar, for 50 years.

“When we decided to commit to this project, we embarked on a path of innovation and development, faithful to our tradition that sees the track as the ideal terrain to push the boundaries of cutting-edge technological solutions, solutions that in time will be transferred to our road cars,” John Elkann, Ferrari chairman, said when its new Hypercar was launched.

Porsche has the most Le Mans wins at 19, taking its first top-class victory in 1970.

“We’ve set our sights on the 20th overall win in France,” Thomas Laudenbach, Porsche’s head of motorsport, said earlier this year.

The big companies for years had been abandoning the top class of the F.I.A. World Endurance Championship, of which Le Mans is the most important part, because of the high cost of racing. Annual budgets were approaching 200 million euros, or about $226 million, in 2017. But changes in the top class and the cost structure have brought the companies back. Pierre Fillon, president of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, which has organized Le Mans since its first running in 1923, said that budgets were about 80 percent lower now.

The return of the major automakers coincides with the race celebrating its centenary.

“There’s new momentum about endurance racing, plus I’m sure the centenary means something for them also,” Fillon said, regarding what attracted the automakers, Ferrari in particular, back.

Ferrari, Toyota and Porsche have 33 of Le Mans’ 90 overall race victories. In recent years, Ferrari and Porsche have entered cars in only the lower Grand Touring categories of the W.E.C. To have them competing against each other for overall honors was long a dream for many enthusiasts and for the Automobile Club, which owns the W.E.C.

After Porsche and its sister brand Audi left Toyota as the lone manufacturer competing in the top category, then called Le Mans Prototype 1 or LMP1, after the 2017 season, the Automobile Club was working to lure the automakers back. Central to the story is the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship held by the Florida-based International Motor Sports Association, or I.M.S.A.

As “the U.S. market is very important to the manufacturers,” Fillon said, a new category would need to be created, replacing the LMP1 car, which teams could race in both I.M.S.A. and W.E.C. for the same cost as developing a car just for one championship.

There were several aims for the new class: It had to be cheaper than LMP1; maintain the more environmentally friendly hybrid technology already being used across motorsport; feature attractive car designs; and provide any team a chance to win.

The result was the new W.E.C. Hypercar class, which was introduced for 2021. By then, both Ferrari and Porsche had stated their desire to compete in the category, once they had established their new endurance racing programs. In I.M.S.A., it’s called the Grand Touring Prototype class, with Porsche and Cadillac competing in both championships. BMW will join them in 2024, when Alpine and Lamborghini also start top-class racing programs.

There will be a total of 16 cars racing in the Hypercar class at Le Mans this weekend, up from five in 2022, with more likely coming next year.

To attract the cars, Fillon explained there had to be “an evolution of the mind of all the manufacturers.”

“In 2014 [when LMP1’s heyday began as Porsche joined Toyota and Audi], it would’ve been impossible to do something like that,” he added. “Because everyone wanted to have the best, most sophisticated cars.

“Now the mind of the manufacturers is different. They want to compete in the two championships, not spend too much money and want to have a chance to win.”

He said this was now the start of “the new golden era for endurance.”

At the most recent round of the W.E.C. at the Spa-Francorchamps track in April, about 70,000 spectators attended the race, up from about 54,000 in 2022, as fans responded to the growing field of automakers.

“We have more people interested by motorsport now, and young people interested since the series about Formula 1, ‘Drive to Survive’ on Netflix,” Fillon said.

“The young generation realize that motorsport is not just to run a car. This is a team, this is a human adventure, there is a lot of stories to tell.”

Rob Leupen, Toyota team director, said his team, which had won the first three W.E.C. races this season, was the one to beat.

“We should be the favorites,” he said, although Ferrari has been getting closer to Toyota, particularly at Spa. “But still you have to do a perfect job. With or without the competitors, if you don’t do a perfect job, there is no mercy at Le Mans.”

The race is unlike any other in the W.E.C. The next longest event ends after eight hours. And at Le Mans, there are a total of about 60 cars competing, when at the other races there is expected to be 38. This means there is a far higher chance something will go wrong on a car and force it to stop, or there will be accidents. The nighttime phase of Le Mans is particularly risky, when fatigue builds and driver vision is reduced.

Toyota knows how quickly a winning position at Le Mans can be lost. Before its current winning streak, its cars broke down several times, most notably in 2016 when it was leading near the finish.

For the new Hypercar class, there are rules to have all the cars run at similar speeds so the races are close. This has the additional benefit of reducing costs because the teams do not need to spend money trying to generate more speed.

The main way this is achieved is by adding metal ballast to the cars. The faster ones get extra weight, while slower cars get less. Toyota must carry 13 kilograms more, about 29 pounds, than Ferrari at Le Mans and 34 kilograms more than Porsche.

This, in theory, gives the new arrivals a real chance to beat Toyota because its additional bulk trims its edge.

“Le Mans is the event of the year for us and this year even bigger because after winning five times, having these competitors now that we have today coming back; it’s what we’re looking for,” Leupen said of Toyota’s new competition. “It will be tough, it will be intense, it will be emotional. It will be maybe writing history” by winning the centenary race.