Trumpeted to be even more epic than the centenary race, the 92nd edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans sold out in just 48 hours, several months before the race itself. In front of 329,000 delighted spectators (a record!) and stars such as Zinédine Zidane, who was entrusted with giving the start, it would be an understatement to say that it lived up to all its promises!

A Dantesque spectacle thanks in particular to a premier category with twenty-three competitors pitting eight renowned major manufacturers against one another: Alpine, BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Peugeot, Porsche and Toyota, all came to the Sarthe with legitimate ambitions to compete for the win. At the end of a hard-fought battle in which bad weather played a part, Ferrari managed to retain its title, its second victory on the bounce with the 499P, the eleventh in its history, thanks to the trio Antonio Fuoco/Miguel Molina/Nicklas Nielsen.

But it would be an insult to the other categories to reduce this event to the Hypercar class alone. United Autosports recaptured its former glory to offer itself a second success in LMP2 after that of 2020, while Porsche and its customer team Manthey EMA became the first winners of an LMGT3 category which has a bright future ahead of it, perfectly guided by Richard Lietz in a state of grace who secured another category victory on Le Mans turf.

Thibaut Villemant has been a car buff ever since he was a kid and attended his first 24 Hours of Le Mans aged five! After studying at Nanterre University in the Parisian region, he joined AutoHebdo in 2009. He became a leading reporter and assistant chief editor up until June 2021. During those years Jean-Marc Teissedre took him under his wing and in 2014 asked him to join the team of writers working on the official annual of the Sarthe twice-round-the-clock race. Today, Thibaut works as a consultant for the L’Équipe TV  channel on the WEC races – including the 24 Hours of Le Mans – while collaborating with the benchmark site Endurance-Info.com and hosting a Youtube channel dedicated to car enthusiasts called Once Upon A Car.

Scale-models led the young teacher to discover his true vocation and he became one of the best – if not the best – endurance racing specialists. His new calling coincided – and it was no coincidence – with the launch of AutoHebdo in 1976! Jean-Marc Teissedre remained faithful to the magazine throughout his career and it made him into a major figure in the milieu. However, his day job didn’t prevent him from investing his talent and enthusiasm in all the major books dedicated to his speciality, including this annual since 1978 on which he’s worked with the late Christian Moity, Alain Bienvenue and Thibaut Villemant. In addition to his rigour as a true professional he brings the meticulousness of a model maker, which he’s always been, to his work, as he also created the monthly revue Auto Modelisme and only relinquished the role of its chief editor a short time ago.