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Last weekend saw the first running of Le Mans Classic in its new annual format, with more modern cars taking the spotlight in this ‘Legend’ edition. Almost 160,000 fans made their way to a sweltering La Sarthe for the long weekend. Through practice, qualifying and races the action was non-stop across 4 days and nights with 5 groups of Le Mans entries plus 4 support races.

Of the Le Mans grids proper, a couple of categories had a disappointing turnout, notably for Group C which only managed just over a dozen cars, in comparison to the grid for earlier prototypes and GT’s for example which numbered over 40 and produced some superb racing. One of the highlights of the weekend was the final race of Grid 10 for 2006 to 2020 cars which saw Christian Albrecht and Philip Kadoorie battle it out over 11 laps for the win in the sister Lola Aston Martins, with the victory finally going to Albrecht by less than 5 seconds.

Alongside the traditional Le Mans cars, there were a number of support races, the highlight of which was undoubtedly the return of NASCAR to Europe after a long absence. Following a shaky start in race 1, Englishman Andrew Jordan led the Americans home in the next 2 races in the 2011 Toyota Camry but it was the battle for third spot in race two on Sunday morning that really got the crowd excited with Kurt Busch edging JC France by just 11 thousandths of a second.

In 2027 Le Mans Classic will feature the earlier grids of cars from 1926 – 1975 and it will be interesting to see if organisers can maintain spectator numbers now that the event will be taking place every year. It is certainly one of the great racing spectacles and one that every enthusiast should visit at least once to say that they have experienced the unique atmosphere.