My 38th visit there – but I’m not sure if many more will follow. Camping at Houx was great this year, nice company with DfH, Julian and his group and Tom and Peaky were also close by. However, the crowd was immense. In the past we took off 2 hours before the start to reach our usual viewing spot at Chapelle, but this year you had problems to find space already at noon. Everything was extremely crowded, passing through the various pedestrian tunnel was sometimes a nightmare and the village was so crowded that you could hardly move.

Enough complaints now, the race itself was great! The Hypercar and GT3 regs have made Le Mans amazing to watch with 9 cars still on the same lap at the end of the race. The racing has become much more attractive and this comes at a price – overcrowded spectator areas!

During practice I visited Barry and Rhys who camped at Arnage/Indianapolis, IMHO currently the best viewing spots. I might give this a try next year, camping there directly trackside reminded me a little on the old days at Maison Blanche or Karting Nord, when you could walk with your morning coffee from the tent to the track within minutes. Need to find out how to get Arnage campsite passes...

I have 1 campsite ticket for the campsite Beausejour, bought at ACO membership price for 74 Euro (appr. 63 GBP). Available as e-ticket, will be mailed once payment has been received (Paypal or Bank Transfer to Germany). Please PM or E-Mail to contact@wernerkirchmann.com

Cheers

Werner

Team LeMansZone (11 people) will be on Houx for the first time ever this year, hippodrome last year was just too much of a hike to the track.
Advance party will arrive already friday 7h june for the scrutineering

A very good race with 3 different manufactorers on the podium: Acura - Cadillac - Porsche. Can't wait for June!

A v ery intersting report about the handling of the BoP for teh Hypercars by ACO/FIA: https://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/sportscar/analysing-the-first-race-for-wecs-new-behind-closed-doors-bop/

I watched 2 hours mid-race and the last hour, good that the season has started again. Obviously they have changed a lot to the platform Bop between LMH and LMDh. First time the LMDh cars were competitive in the WEC. But they overdid it probably a little with Toyota which was the heaviest car with even reduced power. What I found surprising was the lack of performance at BMW, unlike Alpine this is not a new car.

Wow, 6 Porsches in the hypercar-class, 7 if the reserve from Proton makes it!

I wonder if the Vanwall will be on it -  despite beimg ditched for the WEC

I fully agree, Barry. I also wondered occasionally why they sent out the safety cars just to retrieve one car out of the gravel on a 9 mile track. "Slow Zones" would have often been sufficcient.

Well, abandonment of the sorting of cars by category will for sure shorten the duration of each safety car phase, this simply took to much time last year. Compared to the pre-2023 procedure each safety car phase was about 15-20 minutes longer in 2023. I'm still not a fan of the "wave-by. Probably more exciting for the race but very questionable from a sporting point of view. Why the hell should cars which have lost already a full lap get this back?

Hi Jules,

Clos Fleurie was also on offer this year. Only "Prairie" aned "Cormier" are new for 2024.

Hi all,

I have a question: Did anyone of you stay on the Clos Fleuri campsite this year and can provide me with some comments about it? Thanks a lot in advance.

Werner

I fear this is not a typo...

I just looked it up: This year the ACO price for the Houx campsite was 125,- €, now they are asking 175,- € for next year, a 40% increase! This can't be justified with inflation only. Looks like the subject of this thread is spot on!

I think the number of race cars allowed is not only tied to the number of garages. I have read somewhere (don't remember the source, was many years ago) that the max number of cars allowed on each racetrack is set by FIA-rules and depends on the size of the track and the speed of the cars (slower GTs allow a bigger grid than F1 cars). I also remember that in the group C days this limit was about 70 cars for the 24h track, which was never reached. But may be someone knows more? Currently Le Mans has a grade 2 FIA license.