Petit Le Mans – an American Love Story

Big Apple, Big Mac, Big Dreams – you already notice the dimensions in which the average American usually thinks. So, how can it be that the most important race in the endurance championship, Petit Le Mans, is referred to as 'little Le Mans'? After all, we're talking about a country where even the coffee-to-go cup has more volume than a European compact car's engine capacity?

Nevertheless, landing at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport realigns things: nearly 100 million passengers in 2022, a global record. A bus shuttles between the international and domestic terminals, a 20-minute ride. The airport covers around 2,000 hectares. Yes, that's a lot of football fields. And this scale continues. On eight, ten, or even twelve-lane highways, one heads towards the racetrack. A Porsche Cayenne, the largest vehicle in Porsche's current lineup, appears swift, light, and agile amidst giant trucks, Ford Raptors, and Chevi Apaches. Rightly so, embodying the core idea of any Porsche. Fits somehow.

A total of 4.088 kilometers of track, twelve turns. At the 'big brother' in France, the permanent circuit alone spans 4.419 kilometers. In the 24-hour classic, an additional 9.207 kilometers of public roads come into play. Against this backdrop, and the fact that in the USA, it's merely a ten-hour challenge, the 'petit' becomes understandable.

That explains the 'petit,' but it doesn't clarify why Americans specifically borrowed from a European racing classic for its name. They could have named it Atlanta's Greatest or something similarly modest. But no, it had to be Le Mans. The reason lies years back and illustrates that Petit Le Mans has been more than just the IMSA series finale for many years. The late American racing enthusiast, Don Panoz, for reasons unknown, fell in love with France and pretty much everything associated with it. This must have been in the early 1990s. At that time, he made his main living selling nicotine patches. But he wanted more. 

So, he started growing wine. That wasn't enough. He sent his Panoz Esperante GTR-1 to the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Still not enough. He wanted his own Le Mans race. Hence, he secured the rights for a Petit Le Mans in the USA from the Le Mans organizer ACO (Automobile Club de l’Ouest). The first race took place in 1998 and was an instant success. Yet, that wasn't enough for Panoz. He thought American. So, he founded his own racing series, the American Le Mans Series. Over the years, this attracted major manufacturers with their prototypes to the USA. Now, the race is considered a true classic and the pinnacle of the IMSA series. Endurance motorsport in the form it's practiced in the USA today wouldn't be conceivable without Petit Le Mans and Panoz's fondness for France.

True to the old football saying: 'The truth lies on the field!' But in motorsport, especially the action in the race counts. And Petit Le Mans certainly doesn't need to hide from its illustrious namesake. Much to the dismay of Porsche Penske Motorsport. Barely an hour into the race, the leading Porsche 963 with Nick Tandy at the wheel collided with two competitors. Uninvolved, the LMDh heads to the pit. It takes an hour before the car can hit the track again, only to end up in the barriers after another contact – game over.

This year, Porsche Motorsport participated in both the WEC and IMSA not with a factory team but alongside Penske Motorsport. This is the private team of Roger Penske, who has written a success story in motorsport over the past decades, like very few have in North America. Moreover, he has accomplished something that in Big America would almost equate to a marketing miracle. In the mid-2000s, he made the smart a success here. Yes, you read that right: the smart! So, there must be somewhere in this vast land a hidden love for small things.

Beyond that, our columnist Kurt Molzer in the current rampstyle No. 30 – Blue Skies writes about the great stories the IMSA series has delivered in the past.