24h Le Mans
Tailored to the spectator experience, the 24 Hours of Le Mans consistently provokes intense emotions-turned-memories throughout race week and the main event. Plenty of factors contribute to the visual spectacle, including racing car tints.
Variety on the track has always been the name of the game at Le Mans, now more so than ever with Hypercars competing since 2021. As it is sometime difficult to differentiate between prototypes, colour plays a crucial role, in some cases representing a sponsor and in others a 100-year-old story.
Some say motorsport was invented shortly after the second car was made. Though a slight exaggeration, it is true the development of current racing disciplines dates back. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first European competitions brought together carmakers from various countries. So how to make individual provenance recognizable to everyone? By a clever colour code.
When the 24 Hours of Le Mans was created in 1923, the French chose blue, the Italians red, the Germans and Americans white, the Belgians yellow and the Brits green.
These colours have always played a major role in the visual impact of the race, though the tradition found itself forever altered by the arrival of sponsors in the late 1960s. Some carmakers are keen, however, to honour their legacy, particularly at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Certain teams managed to find sponsors whose colour palette matched their own, but that proved rare. In the mid-2000s on the other hand, the gradual disappearance of title sponsors, who reigned in the 1980s, revitalised the use of historic colours in a rather surprising way. A title sponsor on a racing car is a marque who takes up all the space, thereby controlling colour(s) on the entire bodywork without the possibility of displaying other sponsors. These days, constructors competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) make room for many different marques so that no specific one dominates.
Two examples illustrate the point perfectly and currently contribute greatly to the visual identity of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Alpine, founded in 1955 by Jean Rédélé, spotlights blue on its A424. A fan favourite, the French carmaker embraces its origins. The same can be said for Ferrari of course. The colour red is indelibly linked and consistenly chosen to represent the Italian marque on the track. It is probably the most well-known hue in motorsport, possibly ahead of British Racing Green proudly preferred by Bentley, Jaguar, Lotus and Aston Martin across the years. With just a quick look at the winner of the 2023 and 2024 24 Hours, any fan would know it was a Ferrari, simply from the colour. For the team's #83 499P fielded last year, AF Corse opted for a vivid yellow, a direct reference to Ferrari's second historic colour, that of its logo and the city of Modena.
Engineers work hard every year to ensure the fastest possible top speed for their cars. But the silhouette, logo, and above all the colour, are invaluable in sharing with spectators the history of the marque, transcending performance level. One glance is enough to span the entire past century and connect us to the carmaker's future in the next century.
