BRITISH drivers will be to the fore at this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, with 22 UK-based competitors appearing across all three categories.
In the main hypercar division 11 British drivers will compete in nine different cars tomorrow and on Sunday – among them James Calado, who won last year in conjunction with two Italian co-drivers, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi.
Calado goes again with the same pair in the same Ferrari 499P, aiming to show they have finally put an end to the recent dominance of Toyota, who prior to 2023 had won the race five times in succession.
In opposition another Brit, Mike Conway, will be trying to help Toyota reassert themselves in conjunction with Kamui Kobayashi (Japan) and Nyck De Vries (Netherlands) in the GR010 Hybrid.
Conway, who won Le Mans in that car in 2021, will be hoping to build on his recent win with Kobayashi and De Vries in the six-hour Imola endurance race, with current form suggesting they will give Ferrari a run for their money.
Another British veteran and previous winner of the race, Nick Tandy, who took the main prize in 2015, will go into battle for the other main contenders, Porsche, alongside Mathieu Jaminet (France) and Felipe Nasr (Brazil) in one of six Porsche 963s in the race, as opposed to three Ferraris and two Toyotas among the 23 hypercar entries.
That numerical advantage gives Porsche a shout of coming out on top in a gruelling race in which mechanical failure can have its say, though most experts feel they are more likely to take second or third spot.
Former Formula 1 champion Jenson Button, now aged 44, and 24-year-old Phil Hanson drive together in another Porsche (alongside Denmark’s Oliver Rasmussen) in one of the two British Hertz Jota teams, while Will Stevens and Callum Ilott are in the other (also in a Porsche) as they aim to become the first British team to win since Bentley in 2003. Harry Tincknell, who won in the LMP2 class at Le Mans in 2014, is the final Brit in a Porsche car, with Neel Jani (Switzerland) and Julien Andlauer (France).
Another former F1 man, Paul di Resta, drives for Peugeot with Stoffel Vandoorne (Belgium) and Loic Duval (France), and the two remaining Brits are Alex Lynn and Jack Aitken, who will both feature in Cadillacs: Lynn with Earl Bamber (New Zealand) and Alex Palou (Spain) and Aitken with two Brazilians, Pipo Derani and Felipe Drugovich.
While British drivers and teams still lead the historic tables of Le Mans winners, with 34 and 45 victories respectively since the event began in 1923, only three UK drivers have been in a winning car over the past decade, and in recent times other countries, notably France and Germany, have begun to catch up rapidly.
Hoping to improve the statistics even further this year for Germany will be the three-time Le Mans winner Andre Lotterer in a Porsche 963 and F1 driver Mick Schumacher in an Alpine A424, while for France another grizzled F1 veteran, Romain Grosjean, will drive in a Lamborghini SC63 and Kevin Estre, who came second in the FIA World Endurance Championship last year, will be in the Porsche with Lotterer.
Outside the main hypercar event, the LMP2 class for prototypes will be hotly contested by 16 entries, among them three British teams and six British drivers, including Oliver Jarvis, Olli Caldwell and Matthew Ball.
In the LMGT3 class for touring cars, six British drivers and seven British teams are among the 23 car entries, but all eyes are likely to be focused elsewhere in that event as the nine-times world motorcycle GP champion Valentino Rossi makes his 24 Hours of Le Mans debut. The Italian has gone well so far as a newcomer to the endurance circuit with Ahmad Al Harthy (Oman) and Maxime Martin (Belgium) in their BMW M4, but the Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans will be a different challenge altogether.
Aside from Rossi, the other key point of interest in the LMGT3 category will be the all-female Iron Dames team, which has this year entered with a new line-up and a new car: a Lamborghini Huracan LMGT3 Evo2 driven by Sarah Bovy (Belgium), Michelle Gatting (Denmark) and, after the recent withdrawal through injury of rising star Doriane Pin (France), her replacement Rahel Frey, from Switzerland.
They will be among the favourites to take the category title, and victory would make them only the third all-female team to have won their class, with the last such instance in 1975.
All three categories compete at the same time over the same circuit in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which will be started this year by the French footballing legend Zinedine Zidane. It begins at 3pm tomorrow and runs through the night until 3pm GMT on Sunday.
