3rd-Jun-22, 12:35 PM
The race isn't until next week, but the coverage has already started - scrutineering is being live streamed today and tomorrow on the official YouTube Channel, with the test day on Sunday. Live coverage then slips behind a paywall - either via the FIA WEC website/app, Eurosport in Europe or MotorTrend in the US. There's usually on-board coverage made available by the likes of Toyota, Michelin etc, plus highlights and free-to-air coverage (tbc) of the start and finish for casual viewers. If Le Mans is as important to you as is it to me, then spending £8.99 for the WEC coverage or £6.99 for the Eurosport Player pass (valid for a month - so includes the Monza WEC race too) is nothing. You might even find a free 7-day trial for Eurosport or MotorTrend - especially if you already have Amazon Prime TV.
My choice this year is Eurosport. They start their coverage on Wednesday afternoon, with Free Practice 1 - and then pretty much every minute of every '24 Heures du Mans' session is broadcast live and then wrapped up in regular highlights programmes.
The official Le Mans site is the perfect place to get up to speed with the 2022 regulations, classes and entry list. In particular, the four classes - Hypercar, LMP2, LMGTE Pro and LMGTE Am are explained here: https://www.24h-lemans.com/en/lemans/categories and the full entry list can be downloaded as a pdf.
The new Peugeot Hypercar won't make its WEC debut until Monza in July, so the five Hypercar entries are the same as 2021 - two Toyotas, two Glickenhaus 007s and an Alpine. Twenty-seven LMP2 cars are entered, seven LMGTE Pro cars and twenty-three LMGTE Ams. That's a big grid for the 90th running of the legendary race.
So who's going to win? Toyota are celebrating a decade of hybrid power in their Le Mans prototypes this year - and are coming off the back of four straight wins at La Sarthe. Alpine beat them at Sebring in March, but Toyota were victorious at Spa last month. There will be BoP tweaks for the Hypercar class, but a win for anyone but Toyota is most likely going to come down to reliability - and that could mean LMP2s in the fight for at least podium place. The battles in the huge LMP2 and LMGTE Am fields will be thrilling as always - and the BoP regulations usually ensure the GTE Pro Porsches, Ferraris and Corvettes will keep us on the edge of our seats for the full 24 hours.
It's completely pointless to predict anything - but good fun nonetheless. I'll get in very early, giving the kiss of death to cars I'll be cheering on...
- Hypercar: #36 Alpine of Lapierre, Negrão & Vaxivière
- LMP2: #10 Vector Sport Oreca of Sébastien Bourdais, Ryan Cullen & Nico Müller
- LMGTE Pro: #63 Corvette of Catsburg, García & Taylor
- LMGTE Am: #85 Iron Dames Ferrari of Rahel Frey, Michelle Gatting & Sarah Bovy