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70 free 24 Hours of Le Mans trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans has been run on the public roads around a small French city since 1923, and it is still the race that car makers most want to win. This 24 Hours of Le Mans trivia quiz covers the whole story: the Bentley Boys, the 1955 disaster that changed motorsport safety forever, Ford's revenge on Ferrari in 1966, Porsche's 917 and 919, Audi's diesels, Mazda's screaming rotary, and Ferrari's centenary comeback in 2023. The first questions are easy enough for anyone who has watched Ford v Ferrari or Steve McQueen's Le Mans. Then it gets harder: the running start Jacky Ickx refused to run, why two chicanes broke up the longest straight in racing, what Garage 56 is for, and the driver whose Toyota died on the final lap in 2016. The final stretch is for the true fans who know the first winner in 1923 and the car that hit 407 km/h in 1988. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and the race's own history pages, so what you learn here you can repeat at the pub. There are 70 questions, they are free, and no sign-up is needed. If you enjoy it, try our Formula 1 and Indy 500 quizzes next.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 24 Hours of Le Mans is held near the city of Le Mans in which country?
France
Le Mans sits in the Sarthe department of north-west France, and the circuit is partly made of public roads that reopen to traffic soon after the race.
Q 02In what year was the first 24 Hours of Le Mans run?
1923
It is the oldest active endurance race in the world. The 2023 edition was billed as the Centenary race.
Q 03Which organisation runs the 24 Hours of Le Mans?
Automobile Club de l'Ouest
The ACO, founded in 1906, also lobbies for French motorists and runs a roadside assistance service for its members.
Q 04How is the overall winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans decided?
The car that covers the greatest distance
Unlike a Grand Prix, there is no fixed distance: whoever has gone furthest when the 24 hours are up wins.
Q 05On which track is the race held?
Circuit de la Sarthe
It is named after the Sarthe department. The shorter permanent Bugatti Circuit sits inside it and hosts other events year-round.
Q 06The circuit's long straight, the Ligne Droite des Hunaudières, is usually named after which village?
Mulsanne
The straight leads to the village, where cars have to slow from more than 320 km/h to about 100 km/h for a sharp corner.
Q 07Along with Le Mans, which two races make up the informal Triple Crown of Motorsport?
Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500
There is also a Triple Crown of endurance racing, made up of Le Mans, the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring.
Q 08Who is the only driver to have won the Triple Crown of Motorsport?
Graham Hill
Hill completed the set with his 1972 Le Mans win in a Matra, having already won at Indianapolis in 1966 and Monaco five times.
Q 09Porsche is the most successful make at Le Mans. How many overall wins did it have by 2025?
19
Seven of those wins came in a row from 1981 to 1987, and Porsche has also racked up more than 100 class victories.
Q 10Which driver holds the record for the most Le Mans wins, with nine?
Tom Kristensen
Six of the nine came consecutively from 2000 to 2005, mostly with Audi, plus one for Bentley in 2003.
Q 11The record nine-time Le Mans winner comes from which country?
Denmark
He was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog by the Queen of Denmark in 2014.
Q 12Feeling the traditional start was unsafe, what did Jacky Ickx famously do at the start of the 1969 race?
Walked to his car instead of running
He took the time to fasten his belts, was nearly hit by a rival while walking, and still won the race by about 120 metres.
Q 13How many times did Jacky Ickx win the 24 Hours of Le Mans?
Six
His record stood from 1982 until 2005 and earned him honorary citizenship of the town of Le Mans.
Q 21Why were two chicanes added to the circuit's 6 km main straight in 1990?
The FIA refused to sanction straights over 2 km
The straight was cut into three roughly equal pieces, and top speeds dropped from over 400 km/h to about 366 km/h.
Q 22Which car set the never-beaten Le Mans speed record of 407 km/h (253 mph) in 1988?
WM P88-Peugeot
The crew taped over the engine openings for the run; the car was almost undrivable elsewhere and the engine soon cooked itself.
Q 23The record distance covered in the race, set in 2010, was roughly how far?
5,410 km
Q 14Since 1971 the race has begun with what type of start?
Rolling
It is sometimes called an Indianapolis start: the field follows a safety car on a formation lap before the French flag waves.
Q 15Which flag is waved to start the race?
The French tricolour
The flag drop is usually preceded by a fly-past of jets trailing blue, white and red smoke.
Q 16Le Mans is usually held in which month?
June
Being close to the summer solstice means the shortest possible night, though heavy rain is still common.
Q 17At what local time does the race traditionally start on Saturday?
4:00 p.m.
It finishes at the same time on Sunday. Only a handful of editions have used a different start time.
Q 18Under the 2025 regulations, how many drivers had to share each Le Mans car?
Three
No driver may do more than 14 hours in total, and in 2014 two drivers managed the whole race between them under the older limits.
Q 19Which was one of the three classes that raced at Le Mans in 2025?
Hypercar
It replaced LMP1 as the top class in 2021 and admits both Le Mans Hypercar and LMDh designs, alongside LMP2 and LMGT3 in 2025.
Q 20Roughly how long is one lap of the full Le Mans circuit used since 2018?
13.6 km
That makes it one of the longest circuits in the world, and up to 85 percent of a lap is spent at full throttle.
That is more than six times an Indianapolis 500 and about 18 Formula One Grands Prix in a single day.
Q 24Which driver's car went into the crowd in the 1955 disaster, motorsport's deadliest accident?
Pierre Levegh
At least 82 spectators died. The pits were rebuilt further back afterwards, and several countries banned racing entirely.
Q 25Which country reacted to the 1955 disaster with a ban on circuit racing that lasted for decades?
Switzerland
The German, Spanish and French Grands Prix were also cancelled that year, but the Swiss ban outlived them all.
Q 26Which manufacturer's D-Type, winner from 1955 to 1957, had a vertical fin behind the driver?
Jaguar
Designer Malcolm Sayer came from the Bristol Aeroplane Company and applied aviation ideas, including a monocoque tub.
Q 27Disc brakes were first seen at Le Mans in 1953 on which car?
Jaguar C-Type
Two years later Mercedes answered with an air brake: a huge flap that rose from the tail of the 300 SLR.
Q 28Before Ford's breakthrough win in 1966, how many years in a row had Ferrari won Le Mans?
Six
The GT40 project was Ford's answer after Enzo Ferrari walked away from a takeover deal.
Q 29What does the '40' in Ford GT40 refer to?
Its height in inches
Forty inches was the minimum height allowed, measured at the top of the windscreen.
Q 30Ford staged a three-car photo finish in 1966, but Ken Miles lost the win to Bruce McLaren. Why?
His rival had started farther back on the grid
Because winners were then judged on distance from their starting position, McLaren was ruled to have covered eight metres more.