Rolex has turned from timing partner for the 24 Hours of Le Mans to a full time associate from the 77^th session. The 24 Hours of Le Mans (24 Heures du Mans) has been held annually since 1923 near the town of Le Mans, Sarthe, France. It is also known as the Grand Prix of Endurance, an event where not only speed matters but also reliability plays an extremely important role. The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the oldest sports car race for endurance racing in the world. Rolex has been a luxury watch manufacturer since 1905 and has made a mark for itself as a producer of reliable timepieces.

Rolex supports sports car racing events to bring forth to fans world-over the best racing talent in the world. All Rolex sponsored competitions are extremely engaging and a delight for fans. The luxury watch-makers also support Rolex 24 At Daytona and Asian Le Mans Series along with the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the endurance sports car racing category. Rolex has been supporting sports event for over three decades in an attempt to give an opportunity to the best sportspersons in the world a platform to compete and display their talent and potential. Rolex has actively involved itself with sports like golf, sailing, sports car racing, vintage car racing, eventing and continues to give its full support to new and emerging talents in the field. Rolex aims at promoting human brilliance and excellence in sports and rewards the winners with personal Rolex timepieces.

The main focus of 24 Hours of Le Mans is to test the ability of sports car manufacturers to not only build the fastest machines but also reliable sports cars. The event is a test of aerodynamics and stability of cars at high speeds and also encourages the innovation of fuel-efficient vehicles as it requires little time to be spent in the pits. There are currently four classes of competition, the custom-made Le Mans Prototype LMP1 and LMP2, and the Grand Tourers GT1 and GT2. The top two classes LMP1 and LMP2 have mostly won the event, though the lower classes have won occasionally due to reliability. The number of competitors on the race field has generally been 50. Each car has to have no less than two seats and no more than two doors.

Circuit de la Sarthe is where the 24 Hours of Le Mans is held and is a combination of permanent tracks as well as public roads temporarily closed for the race. After undergoing a number of modifications the current track is 13.65 km in length for safety reasons. The safety barriers for the public section have to be assembled and dismantled every year. The endurance races have evolved over the years and have now incorporated rules to better manage the race. Earlier there were no rules as to the number of drivers and how long they could drive. Now, drivers are not allowed to drive for more than four hours at a stretch and no one driver can run for more than fourteen hours in total. These rules have come as a relief as they have successfully reduced driver fatigue during the races.

Tags: 24 Hours of Le Mans, rolex

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 10:38 am and is filed under Rolex Culture, Rolex Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.