If the FIFA World Cup has a sporting relative in motor racing, it’s the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The annual mid-June gathering brings together the planet’s finest sports car teams and drivers in the French town of Le Mans, positioned two hours south of where the D-Day landings took place in World War II. Dating back to 1923 at the delightfully named Circuit de la Sarthe, a reckoning has been spread over 24 unending hours where wickedly fast hybrid Hypercar prototypes and thundering Grand Touring machines fight to endure. Staving off fatigue, mental errors, crashes and mechanical breakdowns is the key to finishing.
The best, or the luckiest — and sometimes its both — tend to win the globe’s greatest motorized honor and get to stand atop the podium, feted as racing kings and queens for the next 364 days. The automobile manufacturers they represent advertise the hell out of those wins to sell more cars; Le Mans is the victory that holds the most meaning for car manufacturers, evidenced by the $100,000,000 or more they spend each year to try and win a single motor race.
Beneath it all, the underpinnings of the race has been fueled by homespun pride. This weekend’s running of the great race — on its 101st anniversary — will pit 62 cars with three-driver squads, 186 drivers in total, against each other for competitive glory and national honor.
Like soccer’s great tournament for the world, those teams and drivers descend on Le Mans representing the colors of their flags and the hopes of their racing-mad peoples. It’s France vs. Germany vs. England vs. Italy vs. Japan vs. Poland vs. Belgium vs. Portugal, and more, including the U.S., using vehicles to settle the score.
Michigan-based Corvette Racing, the factory team dispatched by General Motors to Europe for the past three decades to plunder Le Mans’ spoils, took the art to new levels in the 2000s. The Americans decided hanging the Stars and Stripes in their garage and placing stickers of the flag on their cars didn’t speak loudly enough about who they are, so Mike West, one of their mechanics, had an idea.
Amid the relative quiet in the days before cars hit the track, West walked out onto pit lane, placed a folding chair in the spot where he and the crew would add fuel and change tires dozens of…
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