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Welcome, everyone, to the greatest and, some say, cruellest motor race... in the world. The 79th 24 hours of Le Mans, which kicks off this weekend at the famous Circuit de la Sarthe. The 13.6km circuit will host around 50 cars, which will clock up more than 4,800 kilometres from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.

For the uninitiated, there are four classes to this gruelling, accident-prone and rather fabulous endurance race taking part, and they are thus: LMP1, LMP2, GTE Pro and GTE Am. If you don't know what they mean, click through for a brief rundown.

If you do know what they mean, what are you doing reading this? Get on the first plane to France and down to Le Mans, now!