2010 24 Hours of Le Mans

2010 24 Hours of Le Mans
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The 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans (24 Heures du Mans 2010) was the 78th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, also known as the Grand Prix of Endurance. The race took place on 12–13 June 2010 at the Circuit de la Sarthe, Le Mans, France, and was organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO). Fifty-six cars participated in the event, organized into four categories. This race was attended by an estimated 238,850 spectators.

Audi avenged their loss to the Peugeots in the race by winning the 2010 race with the new R15 TDI plus (a revised version of the R15 compared to last year's), relying on reliability rather than overall speed, much so like they did in the 2005 and 2008 race. The Peugeots, with its four 908 HDi FAPs, were favoured to win the race but was plagued with a broken suspension on one of the 908s early in the race and engine-related failures on the other three after sunrise. Audi's victory marked a new overall distance record (breaking the record set back in 1971), as well as marking the 9th time Audi has won the race (in 12 years of racing at Le Mans), tying Ferrari for 2nd all time in terms of number of overall victories by car manufacturer.

Automatic entries to the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans were granted to teams that performed well in the previous year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, as well as the 2009 seasons of the American Le Mans Series, Le Mans Series, Asian Le Mans Series, FIA GT Championship, and the Petit Le Mans. An automatic invitation was also awarded to the team which accumulated the most points in the Michelin Green X Challenge as part of the Le Mans Series. The award was based on fuel economy of competitors during each event. On 19 November 2009 the ACO published their automatic invitations to 29 teams.

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