The 24 Hours of Le Mans is running today – and as usual the diesels are running much faster than the gasoline powered machines – by substantial numbers.
Peugeot is still leading Audi (much to my disgust), but Peugeot has been the car to beat for several years.
Of course, those are “prototype” cars – not you standard sports car, but, as someone remarked when asked about a problem with one of the leading prototypes, “Hell, I don’t know – those things are space ships!”
Just to give you an idea, everyone knows (at least in their minds) how fast a full-race Corvette or Ferrari is. Prototypes lap the 8.4 mile circuit 30 seconds a lap faster than the fastest racing sport car Ferrari or Corvette! (And of course, a race-prepared anything is SUBSTANTIALLY faster than whatever you can buy at your local dealer. Back when I raced ‘stock” sports cars, we said, “Rule number One: There is no such thing as a “stock” sports car!)
A prototype can reach speeds of 250 MPH on the straightaway, but they usually only top 210 MPH or so, because they must make the car last 24 hours.
And, they must continue to do that.
At night.
In the rain.
You can’t win sitting in the pits – or worse in the garage.
For some unknown reason, in many Le Mans races it either rains or goes into pea-soup fog between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., and when you are already overdriving your headlights, that requires a type of bravery I can only imagine.
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