24h Le Mans
Innovations that are put through their paces on cars competing at Le Mans will end up on the average motorist’s car if they prove to be efficient and reliable. Since the early days, the ACO has endeavoured to maintain close ties between racing and production cars.
Georges Durand and his fellow ACO members founded the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the clear intention of contributing to technological progress and the promotion of motoring. In 1923, there were infinitely fewer vehicles on the road than today but the desire — and necessity — to test technical solutions in a suitable race were already felt. The 24 Hours of Le Mans has long been a vast testing ground for manufacturers. Innovations have always been developed for the race itself first, and then adapted, where relevant, to ordinary cars. Ground-breaking features include disc brakes, fog lamps and fuel injection and quartz-iodine headlights. Owing to the specific nature of a race that calls on competitors to cover the longest possible distance, the notion of energy efficiency (the ratio between the amount of energy used and the performance obtained) soon became a key issue.
Since it was founded in 1906, the ACO has been actively involved in the development of the motor car by defending motorists’ interests, promoting road safety and debating major issues relating to mobility. In keeping with this philosophy, the ACO announced in 2010 that the regulations governing LMP1 prototypes – the premier league of endurance racing – would be completely rewritten. The aim was to spur manufacturers into investing in solutions designed to cut fuel consumption and reduce carbon footprint, while ensuring that the R&D outlay involved in developing a racing car would ultimately benefit vehicles on the street. However, there was no question of diminishing either performance levels or the entertainment aspect of the race.
The ACO therefore devised new regulations for 2014, based on the principle of allocating a certain amount of energy to each car, while giving the manufacturers as much free rein as possible on technical make-up, i.e. engine capacity, number of cylinders, turbochargers, hybrid systems, energy storage and retrieval, etc. The new regulations slashed LMP1 fuel consumption by 30% in just one year – more than the total reduction over the previous twenty years.
Keeping pace with change, the ACO has introduced new rules for 2018 to encourage the development of hybrid technology as well as the quest for efficient turbocharged or naturally-aspirated internal combustion engines. In LMP1, hybrid and non-hybrids compete in the same class with rules designed to level the playing field and to encourage performance, reliability and fuel economy.
Although the regulations give manufacturers plenty of room to manoeuvre, they also ensure that inventions can be adapted to production vehicles, both from a technical and financial angle. Technically speaking, this means manufacturers are forced to use a four-stroke piston engine, fuelled by petrol or diesel, and a fresh air intake – all of which are readily transposed to production cars. Similarly, a number of materials or systems (such as electromagnetic valves) are outlawed because they are too expensive for use on cars sold through regular commercial outlets. The regulations therefore create the conditions for innovations to be extended to ordinary cars, which is indeed the case.
There are dozens of examples of direct links between these two worlds that, at first glance, appear to be so far apart. In 2001, Audi won the race with a direct-injection petrol engine. Two years later, the technology was rolled out on the carmaker’s A2 supermini. In 2011, the R18 stood out from the pack by virtue of its LED headlamps that pierced the darkness. The lighter, more compact and more eco-friendly innovation is now available on most production models. While lessons learned on the track benefit production cars, the opposite is also true as motorsport and development teams work hand in hand. Toyota has long been convinced that hybrid is the technology of the future and its production ranges feature several hybrid versions. The manufacturer therefore had extensive knowledge of the technology before it began developing prototypes with energy recovery systems.
