Image: FIA WEC Upmarket Hyundai sub-brand Genesis is becoming a real grown-up automotive brand and finally kicking off its own major international racing team. While Hyundai has been doing the yeoman’s job racing in TCR and WRC, Genesis has been sitting on the sidelines waiting for its turn at the big leagues. This week the … Read more
Photo: Le Mans Retired French racing driver Hervé Poulain is the father of the “Art Car,” having commissioned Alexander Calder to paint a BMW 3.0 CSL for the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans. Since then BMW has created nearly two dozen different Art Cars, some of which were fielded at Le Mans by Poulain, … Read more
I’ve got the ultimate score for anyone smooth enough to take it on. If we can pull this thing off, we’ll have the coolest car to take to PCA track days. All we have to do is infiltrate Broad Arrow Auctions’ Monterey sale later this month and abscond with a highly unique Porsche race car. … Read more
Image: Toyota Toyota Gazoo Racing is committing to its long-running FIA WEC and Le Mans 24 hypercar program, up to and including building a next-generation car powered by hydrogen. The series had previously announced that it would allow hydrogen-powered vehicles to compete in the top flight Hypercar category, where Toyota currently races the gasoline-electric hybrid … Read more
Image: Audi As a sports car fan in 2014 I genuinely believed that Audi could take down Porsche’s then-record of 16 Le Mans wins. That June, a decade ago, the diesel hybrid R18 E-tron Quattro took a thirteenth overall victory for Audi in 16 years. It was a four-rings party that was seemingly never going … Read more
It’s the best weekend of the year! No, it’s not the weekend I’ve got tickets to see Taylor Swift, it’s Le Mans! This means that the brightest and best from motorsport are in France to fight it out for 24 hours of ridiculously high-octane racing. Are you excited? In the buildup to this year’s race, … Read more
The 1953 running of the Le Mans 24 is historically significant for many reasons. For one, the winning Jaguars employed Dunlop-engineered disc brake systems for the first time, and that braking advantage allowed the almighty C-Type to run hard from the drop of the flag and set an average lap time over 100 miles per … Read more
There aren’t many racing cars that are still relevant on track over a decade after their first outing. For Kremer Racing to enter a Porsche 917 in the 1981 running of the Le Mans 24, 12 years after it first raced there, was unusual at the time and unthinkable today. A regulations loophole allowed the … Read more
Bugatti is well known for its overall win at the 1937 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Jean-Pierre Wimille and Robert Benoist piloted the Type 57G “Tank” to victory, but the brand’s first factory running at Le Mans happened six years earlier in 1931 and was, in typical French fashion, a bit of a protest. … Read more
Screenshot: Car and Driver/YouTube There were a lot of incredible race cars running around tracks in 2023, from new Le Mans prototypes like Ferrari’s winning 499P to hybrid WRC monsters and the second year of Formula 1’s redesigned cars. But one race car captured the world’s attention more than anything else: the NASCAR-based Garage 56 … Read more
