Circuit Bugatti

This article covers the smaller permanent race track within the Circuit des 24 Heures. For the motorsport racetrack of the 24 Hours of Le Mans , see Circuit des 24 Heures .

Circuit Bugatti

Le Mans , Pays de la Loire , France
Route type:	permanent race track
Opening:	1965
Formula 1 venue :	1967
Track layout
Route data
Important events:	Motorcycle World Championship , DTM , Le Mans 24-hour motorcycle race
Route length:	4.185  km (2.6  mi )
Curves:	11
http://www.lemans.org/

Coordinates: 47 ° 56 ′ 30 ″  N , 0 ° 13 ′ 30 ″  E

The Dunlop Bow , 2006

The Bugatti circuit is a race track in the south of Le Mans , in the Sarthe department in the Pays de la Loire region in France .

The permanent, clockwise additional course of the 13.626 km long traditional race track Circuit des 24 Heures was opened in 1965 with a length of 4.422 km, serves, among other things, as the venue for the French Grand Prix as part of the motorcycle world championship and hosted the DTM until 2008 .

Emergence

The Circuit Bugatti , named after the automobile designer Ettore Bugatti , was designed by chief engineer Charles Deutsch , who worked full-time for the French road construction administration and was also a partner in a company that built racing cars. For his design, Deutsch used the home straight and adjacent parts of the track on which the Le Mans 24-hour race was held. Behind the shared pits and the paddock , he designed a new section with six slow to medium-speed corners and a hairpin before returning to the traditional Le Mans circuit.

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  Route 24h-LeMans and the Bugatti Circuit

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  The Bugatti circuit in 1987 before the Dunlop arch was converted

Since then the course has been changed several times. In 1987 the Dunlop arch leading over a knoll (under the pedestrian bridge characteristic of the route, curve 1 on the map) was defused by a chicane because the faster and faster racing motorcycles there lost contact with the ground and jumped higher and higher into the air. Further changes in the last third of the route were made in 1990/1991, when parts of the long Le Mans circuit were rebuilt and new pit facilities were built. In 2005/2006 the course of the Dunlop chicane was modified in order to have a larger run- off zone , especially for motorcycle races. In addition, the exit from the pit lane was moved further back to the end of the home straight. According to official information, the total length is now 4.180 km.
In October 2016, the twelve-year-old pavement was removed and replaced with a new one. Previously, some were bumps present, especially motorcycles, through chattering , caused problems.

In addition, since the construction of a new, permanent section in the last part of the 24-hour course in 1972, there has been a training track called Circuit de Maison Blanche with a length of up to 1.968 km. The entire facility was later supplemented by a go- kart track called Circuit Alain Prost with a length of up to 1.2 km.

Automobile sport

With a few exceptions, this route was and has remained unnoticed by international motor racing. On July 2, 1967, the first and only run took here of Formula 1 for the Grand Prix of France held the Jack Brabham in his Brabham - Repco won. Since this race took place only three weeks after the 24-hour race and because only 15 cars were at the start, only a few spectators came to the track. The drivers also considered it a Mickey Mouse course because of the relatively tight layout . The Briton Graham Hill drove the fastest Formula 1 race lap with a time of 1: 36.7 minutes and an average of 164.62 km / h.

In 2003, the first race of the later Le Mans Endurance Series for sports prototypes was held on the Bugatti Circuit . On October 15, 2006, the DTM was held here for the first time . Although this premiere was officially called "great" by the organizers with 34,000 spectators, they did not put the track back on the racing calendar again until 2008 . In 2009, however, the French DTM round will take place on the Circuit de Dijon-Prenois for the first time . Otherwise the Bugatti Circuit is used for national and club sport car races, but the circuit is mainly a popular venue for motorcycle races .

All winners of Formula 1 races at Le Mans

No.	year	driver	constructor	engine	tires	time	Route length	Round	Ø pace	date	GP of
1	1967	Jack Brabham	Brabham	Repco	G	2: 13: 21,300 h	4,422 km	80	159.166 km / h	02nd July	France

Motorcycling

Since 1969 , most find French courses for motorcycle world championship in Le Mans held, also since 1978, the 24-hour race at Le Mans for motorcycles . The lap lengths differed between 4180, 4240, 4305 and 4435 meters depending on the conversion phase and chicanery variants.

See also

• Circuit des 24 Heures
• List of motorsport racetracks
• List of Formula 1 racetracks

literature

• Peter Higham, Bruce Jones (Translator: Walther Wuttke): Race tracks in the world. Heel-Verlag, Königswinter 2000, ISBN 3-89365-890-4

Web links

Commons : Circuit Bugatti  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Website of the Le Mans Organization
• Aerial photo and route maps ( Memento from March 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
• DTM page about the race on the Bugatti Circuit
• The short Formula 1 history of the course ( Memento from March 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Circuit Bugatti Le Mans: Now 2 seconds faster? In: speedweek.com. January 1, 2017, accessed January 1, 2017 .