Alessandro Pier Guidi competes in his Ferrari 499 P at twilight during the Le Mans 24-hours. Photograph: Guillaume Souvant/AFP via Getty Images
Once, endurance really was the name of the game. The 100 year old Bentley, which chugged happily up the start-finish straight to deliver the winner’s trophy before the start of the race — the same car which, a century ago, won this event on this circuit — had to be nursed and occasionally bandaged to reach the finish.
This year there can be no such doubt. Whatever the machinations of the organisers, Ferrari was facing a packed grid of similarly-powerful ‘Hypercars’ — hybrid racers which appear to have landed from another planet — from Porsche, Toyota, Peugeot, Alpine, Cadillac, and BMW as well as Lamborghini. In all, between works teams and private entries, 23 Hypercars took the start, a record top-class entry not seen since the glory days of the 1980s. More are keen to follow.
The race, with this many top-line competitors, was always going to be topsy-turvy but the weather became the dominant factor. Against forecasts which had predicted largely cool and dry conditions for most of the race, the Loire Valley decided to toy with the team with sudden squalls of rain and wind, which forced teams to gamble on whether or not to fit wet weather tyres or to try and sit it out on slick tyres. This the race swung wildly between Porsche, Cadillac, Toyota, and Ferrari.
Further back, the renewed GT3 class for road-based cars saw some much-needed variety in the entry. Joining previous class stalwarts Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Corvette were Ford, Lamborghini, BMW, and McLaren.