Today at 4 p.m. local time, the 24 Hours of Le Mans Marathon starts for the 92nd time. Zinedine Zidane will perform his honorable duty, wave the French flag and the race will begin – hypercars from Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, Cadillac, Peugeot, Alpine, Lamborghini, BMW and Isotta Fraschini will compete for victory in one of the most prestigious motorsport competitions of the year.
The start on the Sarthe ring is given while driving, but before that all 62 cars of three classes (Hypercar, LMP2 and LMGT3) are traditionally positioned on the starting field at an angle to the direction of travel, and a helicopter with the French flag will fly over the circuit will flutter and the “La Marseillaise” will sound. Pilots from the aerobatic team Patrouille de France fly over the track in their Dornier Alpha Jets, after which the race director gives the start command.
But before that there are still a few hours to go, and in the morning there is a one-hour preliminary race “Road to Le Mans” (the third stage of the Michelin Cup series), after which a short session starts at 12 noon, which the last workout can be mentioned, but it lasts only 15 minutes. It is called Warm-Up, i.e. “warming up”, and is only used to recheck the equipment and make some adjustments to the settings depending on the weather conditions.
The official starting ceremony starts at 3:30 PM, but during the day the pit lane will be open to fans for almost an hour and a half. By the way, a very worthy concert program has been organized for the public, and if the day before popular French musicians performed in Le Mans, then on Saturday evening the famous Scottish rock band Simple Minds, whose discs have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, will enter the stage.
As always, many interesting things are planned for the fans, who will again number more than 300 thousand (last year there were 325 thousand), but the main show, which lasts 24 hours, will obviously take place on the track.
Judging by the weather forecasts, the weather should be largely normal: they promise partly cloudy skies of +18 degrees, although brief showers are possible during the day.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
