The Motorsport You're Not Watching (But Should Be)

F1 gets all the headlines. It deserves them. But there's another world running parallel to it, quieter, less talked about, and honestly more fascinating once you're in it. I race in it. Let me tell you what you're missing.

It's called endurance racing. And the reason most people haven't heard of it is because nobody's really explained it properly.

What it actually is:

The headline series is the FIA World Endurance Championship, the WEC. Seven races across five continents. And the one at the centre of it all is Le Mans. 62 cars, 186 drivers, 24 hours flat-out on one of the most demanding circuits ever built. It's been running since 1923 and it still stops the world every June.

The grid splits into two classes, and three for the 24 hours of Le Mans. At the top, Hypercars, purpose-built prototypes from Ferrari, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Peugeot, Cadillac. Serious money, serious machinery. Below that is where it gets interesting for everyone else: the LMGT3 class. These are race-tuned versions of cars you'd actually recognise, a Porsche 911, a Ferrari 296, a McLaren 720S, an Aston Martin Vantage, stripped back, turned up, and driven flat out for six hours at a stretch. Same road car DNA, completely different animal.

In 2026, a record-equalling 14 manufacturers are on the grid. Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW, McLaren, Aston Martin, Corvette, Porsche, Ford - all in the same race, on the same circuit, at the same time.

Team Toyota driver swap at the 24 hours of Le Mans

The thing that makes it unlike anything else:

Each car carries multiple drivers. In a six-hour race, typically two. At Le Mans, three. And here's where it gets human in a way single-seater racing never is, you've got elite factory professionals sharing the cockpit with gentleman drivers. Wealthy amateurs who've earned their seat, trained hard, and still have to perform at speed in the same car, in the same conditions, against the same competition.

I've shared a car in races like this. The handoff moment, climbing out of a hot cockpit after a double stint, briefing your co-driver in 30 seconds, watching them pull away, is unlike anything in sport. You're still racing but you're not driving. Your heart rate doesn't drop.

The races also test everything simultaneously. Tyre management, fuel strategy, pit stop execution, driver changes at 2am, safety cars, weather, mechanical gremlins. In 2025, six different crews won across the LMGT3 races in a single season. No dominant team. No foregone conclusion race after race. This makes it so much more exciting to watch.

Why it's wide open for brands

F1 is saturated. Every space on every car is sold, every activation is competed for, and the audience, while enormous, is increasingly difficult to stand out in. Endurance racing is a completely different story.

The audiences skew affluent and passionate. The paddock is VERY accessible. Le Mans alone draws over 300,000 spectators across race week, one of the biggest live sporting events on earth, and a fraction of those eyeballs have been properly commercialised. The culture of the sport values depth over noise. A brand that shows up here with authenticity gets something you can't buy in F1: real estate that actually means something, activations that stand out.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans this year runs June 10–14. If you haven't watched it before, this is the year to start.