Le Mans Classic 2025 was driven on July 4-6 on the 13,6 km Circuit De La Sarthe in Le Mans in France. This legendary track has been the venue for the Le Mans 24 hours race for over 100 years. Now Le Mans Classic brought together about 800 historic racing cars and 1000 drivers to celebrate the history of endurance racing. There was 238.000 spectators during the 3 days.
Team Carrera Classic was participating now the second time in the Le Mans Classic Porsche Race. As in 2023 LMC we had a single driver crew. Jussi drove the whole race. The race is for Porsche racing cars from 1965 to 1981. This age bracket means that there we many early 911´s, a lot of 911 ST´s and different versions of 911 RS´s and RSR´s. There were also 906 and 910 racers from the late 1960´s. In the top of the grid you had 935 turbo monsters and a 917. The speed and power differences of the cars were big, from 170hp to 800hp.
The Porsche race had two qualification sessions on Friday and a 45 minutes race on Saturday. We had some technical concerns with our engine on Thursday evening before the qualifications. The decision was not to take a risk and use instead the spare engine. Our technical team: Jan and Erik with help of a French team Dayraut, change the engine on the paddock in 3,5 hours. Great job. The qualification went fine even we had some small technical challenges in both sessions. In the first session we were 60 /81 and in the second in the evening we were 54 /81. The actual race went well, but unfortunately the safety car came to the track in about halfway of the race. There was an accident after the second chicane on the Mulsanne straight and then a lot of oil on the track. The race was finished behind the safety car. Our result was anyway good. In the overall race we were 39 /81 and in the performance race where the engine power is taken in account we were 9 /81. Our car and the fresh Rugen engine were running well. Our top speed in the race was 236 km/h which is a good speed for a 60 year old car with a small 2 liter engine.
The Finnish participation to the event was limited. In the actual races there was Team Carrera Classic in the Porsche Race and our own “reserve driver” Markus Palttala who was driving in the Endurance Legends Race with a Porsche 996 Bi Turbo GT2-R 2003. This is the very same car Markus was driving himself already in 2003 as a young professional!
