24 Stats for the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans

Le Mans is one of my favourite times of the year, last year was the first I’d stayed up to watch the entire race, this year I will do the same.

On top of that I will be tweeting a Le Mans stat every hour of the race, and in a sleep deprived state I may even attempt to work some more out on the spot, which could end badly for me. So here are the 24 stats I will be tweeting during the race.

1. This is the 84th time the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been run, with 60 cars entered and 180 drivers.
2. 21 drivers competing in the race this year have raced in Formula One, but only two of them have won a race.
3. A single lap at Le Mans is 13.629km long, the same length as 20,970 baguettes.
4. There are two familiar sporting names in Le Mans this year, Fabien Barthez and Sir Chris Hoy are both racing in LMP2.
5. The entire track at Le Mans is over 200,000m squared, so you could cover the circuit with 49,910,888 Jaffa Cakes.
6. Ten LMP1 drivers have raced in F1 and five of the six Toyota drivers have, but Mike Conway was a Honda F1 test driver.
7. If the entire track is about 1cm deep in rainwater there is almost enough water to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.
8. A snail would take 282 hours, 17 minutes and 20.157 seconds to do a single lap of the Circuit de la Sarthe.
9. All cars combined will complete around 15,000 laps at Le Mans and travel almost 200,000km, five times around the Earth.
10. At 13.629km long the Circuit de la Sarthe is four times the length of the Circuit de Monaco
11. Tom Kristensen has an impressive 9 Le Mans wins, including 6 consecutive wins, the same number as Jacky Ickx (non-consecutively).
12. A Tour de France cyclist could cycle a lap of Le Mans in 18:10.320.
13. The winning drivers at Le Mans since 1923 have completed a total of 26,243 laps and raced over 350,000km.
14. The combined race distance of all Le Mans winners is almost far enough to reach the Moon at its closest point.
15. Combined distance of every car that has ever raced Le Mans is 9,696,320.071km, which is 242 times around the Earth.
16. 27 different countries are being represented by drivers at the Le Mans, at least one driver for every continent bar Africa.
17. An F1 car on 2016 Pirelli tyres would need to pit roughly every seven laps and would be able to lap around 3:10 to 3:15.
18. The record race distance in Le Mans is 397 laps, 5410.71km by Audi in 2010, this is a greater distance than Raikkonen in 2015.
19. The 200,000km all cars combined will complete in the race is 43 million LMP1 car lengths long.
20. The Circuit de la Sarthe is a long track, how long? The same length as 8260 Alain Prosts.
21. Alex Wurz holds 2 records at #LM24, youngest Le Mans winner at 22 years 91 days old & the biggest gap between 2 wins (13 years).
22. Porsche have won the most races at Le Mans, winning 17 times in total from 1970 to 2015, Audi have the second most with 13.
23. The first Le Mans 24 took place in 1923, won by two Frenchmen in their Chenard-Walcker.
24. If you had 42 Eiffel Towers lying around you could lie them down base to tip and lap once around the Circuit de la Sarthe.