24 hours of Le Mans

Today the test boasts its strength, turned into a huge sporting spectacle, a top-level tourist attraction and a valuable testing ground for many of the best manufacturers in the world. It was more or less what the pioneers thought about when they launched an idea that seemed completely bizarre a hundred years ago. Everything happened from the Paris Motor Show held in 1922. The industry, which was trying to rise from the wounds of the First World War, was growing and every year hundreds of thousands of people came to Versailles to contemplate the industry news. George Durand He was the general secretary of the Automobile Club of the West, the most important automobile organization in France that had its headquarters at the next Le Mans, and he came to the show looking for members for the idea that his club had had: to organize a test that would be more that the speed of the cars would reward their reliability and resistance. At that time, almost no sports competition could be launched without the support of some means of communication. The case of cycling was the most evident, as had been revealed with the Tour de France or the Giro d’Italia, which expanded unstoppably thanks to the push provided by the newspapers that sponsored his birth. Durand was looking for the same effect and that is why he went to meet with Charles Faroux, the editor of “La Vie Automobile”, who immediately blessed the idea and began the search for new support. He didn’t have to look too far because right there, at that Paris Motor Show, he had a choice. he thought of Emile Shell, a representative of detachable wheels and who seemed to have quite innovative ideas. Only the day before, Faroux had heard him talk about the advisability of organizing a nighttime car test with the aim of improving the lighting systems in the vehicles, still too archaic.

Durand, Faroux and Shell They met in the same room and started the first big brainstorm of the year. motoring. Faroux proposed that the race last eight hours and that half of it be held at night and the other half during the day (this especially satisfied Coquille, who was obsessed with the lighting issue). But Durand launched at that moment the idea that had been around his head for a long time: “And why eight hours? Why not twenty-four, a whole day running?” His meeting colleagues at first thought the idea completely crazy, among other things because it would be difficult to obtain the necessary permits to do something similar, but they soon joined the enthusiasm of his new partner. In a short time they reached an agreement and shook hands: from that moment they would start the propaganda machine to seduce manufacturers and authorities.

Durand and his colleagues from the Western Automobile Club were clear that they would use the layout that they had built a few years earlier in La Sarthe, south of Le Mans, but that they should also join it to local roads to extend the distance over which they would run until they exceeded ten miles a lap. Obtaining the permits forced a multitude of meetings and resorting to diplomacy. The complicity of the local authorities was essential because of this detail and because the organizers also wanted them to bear the cost of lighting a part of the circuit. After arduous efforts, they achieved their complicity and installed a series of poles that specially illuminated the finish area.

In addition to propagating the idea, Faroux dedicated himself especially to the design of the regulation. Competing vehicles should be equal to any of their counterparts currently on the roads In fact, at first it was thought of requiring the presence of another identical car on the circuit in case the commissioners wanted to carry out some kind of verification during the test. But in a world of gentlemen like that of the early 20th century, a more elegant solution was chosen: each manufacturer signed a declaration in which they assured that they had manufactured at least thirty other vehicles equal to the one that was competing. It was forbidden to lighten the weight of the cars by removing parts and two-seater cars were allowed but only if they had up to 1,100 cubic centimeters of displacement. The rest had to have four seats and had to carry a ballast of 60 kilos for each additional seat.

A downpour of water and hail the previous hours endangered their dispute

The race, scheduled for May 26 (the move to June was made soon after), soon became a topic of conversation in French society. Few saw any point in a race that consisted of circling a circuit for a whole day and most bet that no car would be able to withstand such punishment. Durand and his colleagues from the Automobile Club of the West managed to complete the logistical part, although the facilities for the teams were somewhat precarious, and they brought together 33 participants, many more than they had imagined when they presented their idea to society.

On the day of the race, a terrible storm hit Le Mans, which made people fear the worst. For four hours the rain, hail and wind left the circuit in a rather lamentable condition and swept away part of the facilities that had been built for the participants. During a stretch of the day, Durand and his partners evaluated the possibility of canceling the race and delaying it for a week, but that again forced them to convince the authorities to renew the permits. However, a truce in time allowed them to embark on the adventure at the scheduled time. It was raining heavily, but that was no obstacle for the thirty-three cars. That was an individual race in which each one competed to meet the challenge of spending 24 hours circling the circuit without the car blowing up.. And in fact, the top positions remained unchanged for almost the entire competition.

Those who announced that this would be a disaster and an endless stream of dropouts were left with the desire. The first abandonment took five hours to produce and was due to a car running out of lights as it began to get dark. Apart from that, there were only two other dropouts despite the fact that many cars had problems, especially due to the stones that were on the circuit and that caused lamps, windshields to break, or even pierced the fuel tanks. the french Andre Lagache y René Leonardwith a Chenard Walker three-liter inline-four, designed by Henri Toutee, were the winners of the first edition. Both were engineers from the French firm, proof that the manufacturers were serious about taking advantage of the race as a testing ground for their designs from the outset. The winner completed a total of 128 laps of the circuit, which meant having traveled 2,209 kilometers throughout the day. His twenty-four hour average was over 92 kilometers per hour. The next day there was no talk of anything else in Paris, of the race and everything that surrounded it. French society was especially amused by the information that next to the pits the Hartford shock absorber firm had erected a gigantic tent which they somewhat pretentiously called the “Hartford Hotel” and in which during the competition they had served almost a hundred chickens, eighty liters of hot soup, four hundred and fifty bottles of champagne and an unspecified quantity of wine. Right there the “hospitality” that is so abused today was born. One hundred years have passed the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the race dreamed of by three visionaries who were not concerned that the cars were fast but hard.