Earlier this week, the Automobile Club l'Ouest made some changes to the safety car rules at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. While that may not seem all that exciting, it will significantly alter how the final hours of this year's race looks in comparison to previous years.
These two rules have helped reduce total interruptions for track clean-up, but they significantly alter strategy calls and the specific timing of when class leaders pass split safety cars, in particular, has often led to close battles under 20 seconds being divided by over a minute and a half on track. Over 24 hours, those interruptions and timing decisions pile up, often deciding races in the lower classes in particular.
Under the new rules, three safety cars will come out to gather the field as they have in the past. This will allow teams and drivers to still come under controlled speeds relatively early in the safety procedure. However, two of those three cars will leave before the race resumes, allowing the entire field to catch up to the lead safety car and re-start as a group.
The ruling means that class battles in LMP2 and GTE-Am are far less likely to be decimated by the timing of safety cars, but cars that lose a lap or more over the course of the race will not simply be handed their lap back when the next safety car comes out.