When you race, it’s life. The famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race has been running for a hundred years

Steve McQueen in the movie Le Mans
Author ▪ Professional media

TOsince people are risking their lives, shouldn’t it be for something very important? What is so important about going faster than anyone else, asks the widow of a tragically killed racer in the famous film Le Mans. “When you race, it’s life. Everything that happens before or after is just waiting,” says Steve McQueen on the silver screen in the role of a driver who returns to the wheel of a super sports car after an injury.

Nowhere would the film’s dialogue about the risks and meaning of racing stand out better than in the environment of a circuit where drivers abuse extremely powerful cars for 24 hours. No autodrome has driven as fast and nowhere else has as many racers or spectators lost their lives as on the semi-“natural” track at Le Mans. And perhaps no race has ever attracted so many world car companies to try to show how fast and at the same time reliable cars they can build. Hand in hand with this came a number of inventions and innovations that gained ground even outside the “racing laboratory”.

The history of the unique endurance race, during which the best crews cover a distance corresponding to the journey from Prague to Lisbon and back, began to be written exactly one hundred years ago.