The
road racing track, which was a triangle from Le Mans down south to
Mulsanne, northwest to
Arnage, and back north to Le Mans, has undergone many modifications over the years, with
CIRCUIT N°15 being in use since 2018. Even with the modifications over the years, the Sarthe circuit remains very fast, with prototype cars achieving average lap speeds in excess of . In the 1920s, the cars drove from the present pits on
Rue de Laigné straight into the city, then took a sharp right-hand corner near the river
Huisne Pontlieue bridge (a hairpin removed from the circuit in 1929). They left the city on the rather straight section now named
Avenue Georges Durand after the race's founder. Then long and unpaved, a bypass within the city shortened the track in 1929. The city was bypassed completely in 1932 with the addition of the section from the pits via the
Dunlop Bridge and the Esses to Tertre Rouge. This classic configuration was long and remained almost unaltered even after
the 1955 tragedy. Its frighteningly narrow pit straight was further narrowed to make room for the pits and was part of the road itself, without the road becoming wider around the pits, and no separation. The pit straight then was about wide, further widened in 1956 after the tragedy, but the race track and pits were not separated for another 15 years. Car speeds increased dramatically in the 1960s, pushing the limits of the "classic circuit" and sparking criticism of the track as being unsafe after drivers died during trials. In 1965, a smaller
Bugatti Circuit was added which shares the pit lane facilities and the first corner (including the famous Dunlop bridge) with the full "Le Mans" circuit. For the 1968 race, the Ford chicane was added before the pits to slow down the cars. The circuit was fitted with
Armco barriers for the 1969 race. The "Maison Blanche" kink was particularly harrowing, claiming many cars over the years (including three
Ferrari 512 variants) and several lives, including the legendary
John Woolfe in 1969 behind the wheel of a
Porsche 917. The circuit has been modified ten more times — 1971, a year when prototypes were averaging over , was the last year the classic circuit was used. That year, an Armco barrier was added to the pit straight to separate the track from the pits. In 1972, the race track was considerably revamped, at a cost of 300 million
francs, with modification of the pit area and the first and final straights, the addition of the quick
Porsche curves bypassing "Maison Blanche", the signalling area being moved to the exit of the slow Mulsanne corner, and the track being resurfaced. In 1979, due to the construction of a new public road, the profile of "Tertre Rouge" had to be changed. This redesign led to a faster double-apex corner and saw the removal of the second Dunlop Bridge. In 1986, construction of a new roundabout at the Mulsanne corner demanded the addition a new portion of track in order to avoid the roundabout. This created a right hand kink before Mulsanne corner. In 1987, a chicane was added to the very fast Dunlop curve, where cars would go under the Dunlop bridge at . Now they would be slowed to . Le Mans was most famous for its long straight, called
Ligne Droite des Hunaudières, a part of the
route départementale (for the
Sarthe département) D338 (formerly
Route Nationale N138). As the Hunaudières leads to the village of Mulsanne, it is often called the
Mulsanne Straight in English, even though the proper
Route du Mulsanne is the one from or to Arnage. After exiting the Tertre Rouge corner, cars spent almost half of the lap at full throttle, before braking for Mulsanne Corner. The Porsche 917
long tail, used from 1969 to 1971, had reached . After engine size was limited, the top speed dropped until powerful turbo engines were allowed, like in the 1978
Porsche 935, which was clocked at . Speeds on the straight by the
Group C prototypes reached over during the late 1980s. At the beginning of the
1988 24 Hours of Le Mans race,
Roger Dorchy driving for
Welter Racing in a "Project 400" car, which sacrificed reliability for speed, was clocked by radar travelling at .
Jean-Louis Lafosse and
Jo Gartner would ultimately suffer from fatal high speed accidents in 1981 and 1986, respectively, leading to concerns with the growing speeds on the straight. As the combination of high speed and high downforce caused tyre and engine failures, two roughly equally spaced
chicanes were consequently added to the
Mulsanne Straight before
the 1990 race to limit the maximum achievable speed. The chicanes were also added because the
FIA decreed it would no longer sanction a circuit which had a straight longer than , which is roughly the length of the
Döttinger Höhe straight at the Nürburgring
Nordschleife. The fastest qualifying lap average speed though only dropped from in 1992. In 1994, the Dunlop chicane was tightened. In 2002, the run to the Esses was reconfigured in the wake of renovations to the Bugatti Circuit. The Le Mans circuit was changed between the Dunlop Bridge and Esses, with the straight now becoming a set of fast sweeping turns. This layout allowed for a better transition from the Le Mans circuit to the Bugatti circuit. This layout change would also require the track's infamous carnival to be moved near the Porsche curves, and in 2006, the ACO redeveloped the area between the Dunlop Curve and Tertre Rouge, moving the Dunlop Chicane in even tighter to create more run-off area, while also turning the area after the Dunlop Chicane into an even larger set of fast, sweeping turns, known as the Esses en route to Tertre Rouge. As part of the development, a new extended pit lane exit was created for the Bugatti Circuit. This second pit exit re-enters the track just beyond the Dunlop Chicane and before the Dunlop Bridge. Following the fatal crash of Danish driver
Allan Simonsen at the 2013 race at the exit of Tertre Rouge into D338, Tertre Rouge was re-profiled again. The radius was moved in approximately for safety reasons with new tyre barriers at the exit. The current version of the track has been in use since 2018. Image:Circuit De La Sarthe map.JPG|An on site map of the circuit Image:Dunlop curves 2006 run off modifications.JPG|The area before the Dunlop bridge, modified for 2006 Image:Circuit de la Sarthe Ford Chicanes.jpg|The Ford Chicanes Image:Mulsanne Le Mans.jpg|A large portion of the track still consists of Sarthe Route Départementale D338. Image:Le Mans location map.jpg|Circuit location between Le Mans and Mulsanne, France
Layout evolution of Circuit de la Sarthe File:Circuit-de-la-sarthe-1906-(openstreetmap).png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1906) File:Circuit-de-la-sarthe-1911-1913-(openstreetmap).png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1911–1913) File:Circuit-de-la-sarthe-1906-1921-(openstreetmap).png|Comparison of Circuit de la Sarthe layouts between 1906 and 1921 File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1921-1928.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1921–1928) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1929-1931.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1929–1931) File:Circuit de La Sarthe Le Mans 1932-1967.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1932–1967) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1968-1971.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1968–1971) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1972-1978.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1972–1978) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1979-1985.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1979–1985) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1986.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1986) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1987-1989.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1987–1989) File:Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans 1990-2001.png|Circuit de la Sarthe (1990–2001) File:Circuit de la Sarthe track map.svg|Circuit de la Sarthe (2002–present) File:Le Mans Circuit comparison.png|Layout evolution of Circuit de la Sarthe ==Lap records==