You will probably read many poorly researched and uninspired articles every June which describe Le Mans as an unremarkable town to the South of Paris. But that is a great disservice to what is actually city with a blend of the cutting edge and the medieval. Kings of England were born there, the Wright brothers flew there and today it leads the world in the design of electrical connectors and er, tractors.
Of course if you are reading this then it is probably the collection of roads between the Southern tip of the city and the villages of Mulsanne and Arnage that have your attention. The 13.629km circuit, made partially of public road and partially of bespoke race circuit attracts race engineers like flies to excrement. There is an undefined magic about the annual 24 hours race, but from a technical standpoint the real challenge today is getting a car to work on a track which mates very long flat out sections with more technical corners. This means a real ballet of compromise between top speed and cornering and it is easy to go too far one way or the other. It is one of the most fascinating challenges in motorsport, especially given the fairly open regulations. In 2017 the hybrid cars racing in LMP1 are no longer the fastest in a straight line as they balance overall energy usage with lap time. The drivers use the lift and coast technique to best utilise the allowed energy per lap, so they are not especially fast in terms of top speed ? but they get to that top speed very ...