What is the 24 Hours of Le Mans and when is the iconic 2025 race?

The 24 Hours of Le Mans. One of the most iconic races in all of motorsport, but honestly, if pressed, could you really tell someone much about it other than 'um, it's in France, in Le Mans, that's why it's called that, and it's...well they drive for 24 hours, obviously, and I think they drive in teams of...two? three, maybe? So they can sleep and stuff??'?

That's what we thought. Never fear though, here's a handy cheat sheet for the race that's taking place for the 93rd time next weekend.

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Things kick off at 4pm local time (3pm BST) on Saturday 14th June, running until...you guessed it, 4pm on Sunday 15th June, because of the whole '24 hours' thing.

There's a lot of running through the week too though, most critically the two Hyperpole sessions on Wednesday and Thursday – the former to determine which cars make it through to Thursday's session, and the latter to set the top 12 for LMP2 and LMGT3 categories and top 15 for the Hypercars.

Heck, there's even been scrutineering already and the official Test Day running on Sunday of THIS week!

Speaking of which...

What are the Le Mans racing categories?

That's right, we've got separate categories for LMP2, LMGT3 and Hypercars. But what does...any of that mean?

The Hypercars are the creme de la creme of the endurance racing world – think about the Ferrari 499Ps and Aston Martin Valkyries, the latter of which will be entering the race for the first time.

Since 2021, the top class of WEC, the Hypercars category, will feature two types- LMH (Le Mans Hypercar, from 2021) and LMDh (Le Mans Daytona h, from 2022).

Then there's the LMP2 cars (Le Mans Prototype 2, if you're being formal) which are the next step down, and have actually been forcibly slowed down a little to ensure a more marked difference between them and the Hypercars. They're still absolutely lightning fast, mind.

LMP3s (yes, same naming convention) are described as an 'entry-level' endurance car for young and inexperienced drivers, but they'll still average 120mph on a lap of Monza, and max out at about 180mph. It's not exactly a Kia Picanto.

There are 21 Hypercar entries in this year's Le Mans, with 17 LMP2s and 24 LMP3s. That's an awful lot of cars for one circuit, isn't it?

How long is the Le Mans track?

Massive. The Circuit de la Sarthe is 8.467 miles (13.626 km) long, with a whopping 38 turns for the drivers to navigate. Don't let all of those corners fool you though, drivers are at full throttle for about 85 per cent of the lap.

It's that intense workload on the engines that makes the track such a car-breaker, but the brakes don't exactly have an easy time of it either. Getting up to full speed so often means that when braking for corners comes (the sharp turn at Mulsanne, for example) it's time to slow down from 200-odd mph to a crawl. And then to do that for 24 hours.

The race lap record around the track is 3:17.297, set by Mike Conway in 2019 in the now-defunct LMP1 class. The fastest Hypercar lap is 3:27.218, set in 2023, just 18 thousandths of a second slower than the LMP2 record of 3:27.200, set in 2018 before that category was throttled back.

The LMP3 record sits at 3:46.374, which seems slow in comparison to their peers, vindicating the 'entry level' label, until you realise that's still an average speed of around 235kph. Average!

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Who's driving the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans?

Right, think about this sensibly. There are 62 cars with three drivers each. We're not giving you 186 names in this light explainer, because we don't hate you that much.

How about the former F1 drivers? We can do that. Deep breath now...

2009 world champion Jenson Button will be in action, as well as fellow Brit Jack Aitken, who raced in F1 precisely once (2020 Sakhir GP, fact fans!)

We've also got Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen, joining fellow recent F1 entrant Nyck de Vries.

Kamui Kobayashi, Sebastian Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Haas F1 reserve Ryo Hirakawa, Antonio Giovinazzi, Paul Di Resta, Sebastian Bourdais, Stoffel Vandoorne, Felipe Nasr, Pascal Wehrlein, Will Stevens, Jean-Eric Vergne, Andre Lotterer and Pietro Fittipaldi make up the rest of the long, long list.

How to watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans

If you just came to this piece for TV channel information, sorry for making you scroll down this far. Hopefully you've learned something, though!

If you're very online, you can sign up for the official WEC streaming channel for, €17.99, ad-free for the duration with onboard cameras and the like. Snazzy!

Already got a Discovery+ or Eurosport subscription? You're golden! They're the British TV channels showing the race.

Who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2024?

Ferrari AF Corse won the overall race and Hypercar category last year, with Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen piloting their Ferrari 499P to win by just under 15 seconds after 311 laps.

United Autosports's Bijoy Garg, Oliver Jarvis and IndyCar star Nolan Siegel drove an Oreca 07-Gibson to victory in the LMP2 category, while the Manthey EMA team of Richard Lietz, Morris Schuring and Yasser Shahin won the LMPG3 classification in a Porsche 911 GT3 R (992).

Who is favourite to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2025?

After a slow start to the WEC season for Porsche, expect Toyota and Ferrari to fight for the victory – the former running two cars in the Hypercar class and Ferrari running three, including last year's winning crew.

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