LeMans 24 & WEC : Auto Race Motorsports in the Earth 3
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[ LeMans 24 & WEC
: Auto Race Motorsports in the Earth 3 ]
1. The beginning of 24-hour endurance race & sports car racing
F1 racing focused on who was driving faster on a fixed distance.Just in time for the race, the race car had to run as fast as it could, so the f1 teams set up the racecars with all their resources focused on getting the car's performance to the fullest.
With such extreme performance to the limit, the engine often broke during the race and the racecar could not finish.
Even if the engine didn't break, it was natural to use a new engine in the next game after one game.
If you look at the F1 race, It is not difficult to see the scene where the car stops because of engine trouble.
In the 1920s, sports cars began to spread, and since the sports cars of that time were built with a focus on performance, such as zero to 60 mph and top-speed, engines often broke.
Even if it was a fast car, if the engine stopped, it would be useless to drive slower than a wagon.
So people naturally began to care about durability.
in other words, people start to wonder not only "Who can run a fixed distance faster?", but also "Who can run more distance at a fixed time?"
So in a 24-hour period, people competed for who was running more distance on the circuit as a sports car, which was the beginning of the 24-hour endurance race and at the same time the sport car racing.
2. World's top three endurance Races & World's top three car races
from 1923 started in FranceLe mans 24 hours,
From 1924, the year after Le Mans began started in Belgium
Spa 24 hours,
from 1962 started in the U.S.
Daytona 24 hours,
These three races are the most representative endurance races in the world called the world's top three endurance competitions.
For your information, the top three car races in the world are
Formula One Monaco Grand Prix (Monaco GP),
IndyCar Series Indianapolis 500 Mile Race,
and Le Mans 24 Hours Race.
3. Start of the world's sports car racing competition
Then, after World War IIin 1953
the World Sportscar Championships began,
and the sports car racing era began in earnest.
The World Sports Car Championship has raced in various circuits around the world,
including the European Le Mans 24 hours,
Spa 24 hours,
and the Americas' Daytona 24 hours.
So it was the world's best sports car racing competition.
4. Sports prototypes and mass production sports cars
The World Sports Car Championship was held in two categories:Sports Prototype that is not very mass-produced
and mass-produced sports cars sold to the public.
Even if people had the technology to make the best sports cars, they couldn't mass-produce them without marketability or the money to have a production system.
That is why to create a category called Sports Prototype
that allowed sports cars with a variety of high-tech applications to participate in the race more freely.
And with so a lot of Sports Prototypes racing fiercely, automobile technology was able to evolve even faster
5. Endurance race type and difficulty
There are two types of endurance races.The first is a "time race" of who was going to run more distances over a certain period of time, like a 24-hour endurance race,
and the second is a "distance race" of who was going to run faster on a distance of hundreds of miles, like 1,000 kilometers race or 500 miles race.
You may think that there will be a more relaxed race compared to the F1
because the racecars used in the endurance race are relatively slow compared to the F1 racecars (a little bit).
However, sports prototypes are the fastest racecars in the world, except for the F1 racecars
Although the lap time of a circuit is slower than that of the F1 race car,
Sports prototypes run 75 percent of the race in full throttle, with a maximum speed of over 300 kilometers.
Sports prototypes have to run hundreds of laps, not tens at that speed.
So The difficulty of the race is unimaginable
6. History of sports car racing
The World Sports Car Championship, which began in 1953, was held until 1992.After that, in Europe, the sports car racing had been divided into FIA Sportscar Champion, which the Sports Prototype participated
and FIA GT Champs which mass-production sports cars participated.
And again, The European Le Mans Series champions, which combine sports prototypes and mass production sports car categories, had been held.
And after a competition called the InterContinental Le Mans Cup, the FIA World Endurance Championship began in 2012 and continues to this day.
Called WEC for short, the competition includes 24 hours of Le Mans.
CARirang Talk 5-1
