24 Hours of Le Mans Trivia
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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 01For most of the year, long stretches of the Le Mans 24 Hours circuit serve as what?
Public roads
Public roads: the circuit's longest straight is an ordinary highway, so safety barriers go up every year for the race and traffic is let back on almost as soon as it is over.
Q 02Why did Le Mans 1923 end an hour later than it began?
Clocks changed
Clocks changed during the very first Le Mans: France moved to summer time at 11 pm on race night, so 24 hours of racing ended an hour later in the day. It is also the only Le Mans ever run in May.
Q 03Which organisation runs the 24 Hours of Le Mans?
Automobile Club de l'Ouest
The Automobile Club de l'Ouest began in 1906 as the local motor club that laid out the course for what became known as the first Grand Prix, held near Le Mans; 17 years later it launched its 24-hour race.
Q 04How is the overall winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans decided?
Greatest distance
Greatest distance when the 24 hours are up wins, yet the first race crowned no official winner: its trophy was to be decided over three consecutive years, a plan that was soon dropped.
Q 05On which track is the 24 Hours of Le Mans held?
Circuit de la Sarthe
The Circuit de la Sarthe once ran into the streets of Le Mans itself; by 1932 the city had been bypassed completely, which cut almost four kilometres from the lap.
Q 06Le Mans' long straight, the Ligne Droite des Hunaudières, is known in English by the name of which village?
Mulsanne
Mulsanne is the village where the straight ends, so English speakers borrowed its name; the French name comes from Les Hunaudières, a hamlet half-way along it.
Q 07Which two races join Le Mans in motorsport's informal Triple Crown?
Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500
Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 is today's popular version; the earliest one counts the Formula One world title in place of Monaco, and the Le Mans organisers' own history of the race describes the crown that way.
Q 08Which driver completed motorsport's Triple Crown by winning Le Mans in 1972?
Graham Hill
Graham Hill won in a French Matra to finish a set no other driver had completed; a late starter, he had not even passed his driving test until he was 24.
Q 09Which oil company's light blue and orange colours were on the Ford GT40 that won Le Mans in 1968 and 1969?
Gulf
Gulf's colours won both years on the very same car, GT40 chassis 1075, yet the Gulf-liveried Porsches that followed and made the colours famous never won Le Mans at all.
Q 10Which driver retired in 2014 with a record nine Le Mans wins?
Tom Kristensen
Tom Kristensen won on his Le Mans debut in 1997 after a last-minute call-up, then took six in a row from 2000 to 2005 on the way to nine.
Q 11The record nine-time Le Mans winner comes from which country?
Denmark
Denmark's record-breaker was never beaten to the finish at Le Mans between 1997 and 2005: in nine starts he won seven times, and his car failed to last the distance in the other two.
Q 12Calling the traditional Le Mans start unsafe, what did Jacky Ickx do as the 1969 race began?
Walked to his car
Walked to his car, then buckled up, set off last and still won. Minutes into the race a driver who had not stopped to fasten his belts was killed, and the running start was scrapped the next year.
Q 13Six-time Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx also won which rally in 1983, driving a four-wheel-drive off-roader?
Dakar
Q 21Why were two chicanes added to Le Mans' 6 km main straight in 1990?
A new FIA circuit rule
A new FIA circuit rule: the governing body would no longer approve any circuit with a straight over 2 km, so the 6 km blast was cut in three, two years after a car was clocked there at 405 km/h.
Q 22Which member of Pink Floyd raced at Le Mans five times from 1979?
Nick Mason
Nick Mason, the band's drummer, was in the middle of recording The Wall in 1979 when he slipped away to make his Le Mans debut, and he came home second in his class.
Q 23Roughly how far did the winning car travel to set the Le Mans distance record in 2010?
5,400 km
Dakar fell to Ickx with French film star Claude Brasseur as his co-driver, and he tackled the desert marathon 14 times in all.
Q 14Since 1971 the Le Mans 24 Hours has begun with what type of start?
Rolling
Rolling starts came in a year after the traditional Le Mans start was abandoned: in 1970 the drivers began already strapped into their parked cars, and from 1971 the field was released on the move.
Q 15Which flag is waved to start the Le Mans 24 Hours?
The French tricolour
The French tricolour is waved by an invited guest starter: Hollywood's Brad Pitt did the honours in 2016, and tennis champion Rafael Nadal in 2018.
Q 16Le Mans is usually held in which month?
June
June puts the race right beside the summer solstice, so the drivers face one of the shortest nights of the year, and a little less racing in the dark.
Q 17Spanish gamer Lucas Ordóñez reached a Le Mans class podium in 2011 after winning a contest for players of which video game?
Gran Turismo
Gran Turismo's GT Academy turned its best players into real racing drivers: two years later Ordóñez was back on the class podium, sharing his car with a second academy graduate, Jann Mardenborough.
Q 18Which film star co-owned the team that came second at Le Mans in 2017?
Jackie Chan
Jackie Chan's cars came from the second-tier LMP2 class, yet one of them led the whole race in its closing hours as the factory hybrids hit trouble; he likened the result to winning his Oscar.
Q 19Which was one of the three classes that raced at Le Mans in 2025?
Hypercar
Hypercar took over as the top class in 2021, after two of the biggest carmakers had quit and costs had spiralled under the old rules; the cheaper formula soon drew a crowd of major makers back to the race.
Q 20Roughly how long is one lap of the Le Mans 24 Hours circuit?
13.6 km
13.6 km makes it one of the longest laps in world motorsport, yet the fastest cars have covered it in less than three and a quarter minutes.
5,400 km in a single day: racing cars kept getting quicker, yet nobody had covered more ground than the 1971 winner for 39 years until the 2010 race finally beat it.
Q 24Which driver's car flew into the crowd in the 1955 Le Mans disaster, motorsport's deadliest accident?
Pierre Levegh
Pierre Levegh had earned his seat in the German team three years earlier, when he drove nearly 23 hours of the race alone and was leading it until his car failed near the end.
Q 25Which country reacted to the 1955 Le Mans disaster with a ban on circuit racing that lasted for decades?
Switzerland
Switzerland banned circuit racing outright, which killed off its own Grand Prix; when a Swiss Grand Prix was next held for the world championship, in 1982, it had to be run across the border at Dijon in France.
Q 26Which manufacturer's D-Type, winner from 1955 to 1957, had a vertical fin behind the driver?
Jaguar
Jaguar's designer Malcolm Sayer had spent the war at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, so he shaped the D-Type like an aircraft, tail fin and all; he went on to design the E-Type.
Q 27Which innovation, now on almost every car, did the 1953 Le Mans-winning C-Type bring to the race?
Disc brakes
Disc brakes, supplied by Dunlop, let the C-Types brake later and harder than their drum-braked rivals, and Le Mans was won at an average of over 100 mph for the first time.
Q 28Before he ran Ford's Le Mans team, Carroll Shelby won the race in 1959 for which British marque?
Aston Martin
Aston Martin won with Shelby and Roy Salvadori sharing the car; the Texan, a chicken farmer before he took up racing, soon quit driving and started building cars of his own.
Q 29What does the '40' in Ford GT40 refer to?
Its height in inches
Its height in inches: the car stood barely 40 inches off the ground, so low that the 1967 winner needed a bulge built into its roof to make room for its tall driver, Dan Gurney.
Q 30Why did Ken Miles lose Le Mans 1966 to Bruce McLaren after Ford staged a photo finish?
McLaren had started further back
McLaren had started further back, so in the same 24 hours his car had covered slightly more ground; Ford had wanted a dead heat, but the rules had no room for one and Miles was placed second.