Nine ways Le Mans racing tech has filtered into road cars

The barrel-shaped Bentley Le Mans racer was challenged in 1925 when the Chenard & Walcker Tank raced at Le Mans with a coupe-shaped drop at the rear. This catalysed the search for a better drag coefficient. These days, everything is optimised for minimal drag, better fuel efficiency, or more recently, better battery range.

The self-igniting stuff has shown advantages over the sparky-based petrol set-ups, though never for motorsport. That was until 2006, when Audi won the thing in a diesel-fuelled prototype. The black stuff is now cleaner than ever before, and the race has been a great test bed for particulate filters (DPFs/FAPs), but the future? It likely begins with an 'e'.

It's been 122 years since disc brakes came onto the automotive scene. But there was only real success with them in the 1950s. Finally thick-but-light enough to competitively endure the full 24-hour race at Le Mans, Sir Stirling Moss in a Jaguar XKC 003 and co-driver Derek Bell placed second and won in subsequent years. Disc brakes were optional extras on Jags by 1958.

In 1926, Frenchman Pierre Marchal, head of a company manufacturing lights, convinced French car maker Lorraine-Dietrich to position fog lights under the car's headlights to combat the patchy fog that forms a part of the Le Mans 24hr challenges. Thinking goes, by illuminating the area lower down, there's less glare and more visibility.

That year, fog lights helped the Lorraine-Dietrichs reign supreme. Cue a decade of aftermarket sales growth, a lifetime of car design integrating now-regulated fog lights — and of course, a group of boy racers who insist on using them against regulation. Cheers, lads.

Front-engined, rear-drive cars were typical until 1927. That year, a businessman called Fenaille sponsored a driver/engineer called Gregoire on his front-wheel-drive project called Tracta, finishing seventh.

The Automobile Club de L’Ouest (ACO) tells us Citroen adopted this design approach on the 'Citroen Traction' later that year.

These days, front-engined, front-wheel drive is common on mass market cars, and works just like this diagram on a SEAT Alhambra suggests. You can almost smell the understeer.

The 2001 win for the Audi R8 was chalked up to the direct injection technology in the V8 biturbo engine. Putting the fuel into the combustion chamber instead of the intake manifold helped enormously.

Driver Frank Biela said: “Back then, we had to make very precise use of the engine’s power output so that we wouldn’t slip off track. The FSI technology ideally assisted us in this effort. The responsiveness of the Audi R8 notably improved.”

It also cut fuel consumption and helped the engine start faster, making pit stops shorter. 'Nuff said.

Hybrid technology began with Toyota's much-mocked Prius, but the Japanese brand has had the last laugh. Currently, the Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR) team is onto its fifth consecutive victory in the world-endurance racing GR010 Hybrid.

Innovations have led to improved cooling, inverters fitted directly to the electric motor, and different materials for the high-voltage semiconductors – all of which have informed the technology going into road cars.

Over the last 100 years, Le Mans has been about light. And we don't mean weight, in this instance (although that does count too). The 24-hour period of this fabled endurance challenge sees light conditions alter gradually but dramatically. Constructors are desperate to light the way, while keeping the car as lightweight as possible.

Every kind of lighting technology, including halogen (quartz iodine), Xenon (discharge) and most recently LED lights have been tested for endurance, durability and performance. It's meant a gain in visibility from 100 metres to 1,000 metres over the century.

In 1926, Le Mans’ track resurfacing was complete. Starting life as a pure dirt track in 1923, a mix of chalk chippings, bitumen and tar-coated grit was applied over three years, starting with the Mulsanne Straight.

Though not directly copied, the same approach informs the way we surface roads today.