Peter Auto Announce 2016 Le Mans Classic Changes and Innovations
At their press conference yesterday at the Retromobile exhibition in Paris yesterday, Peter Auto announced a number of innovation an changes for this year’s Le Mans Classic. For the first time the track action will start on the opening Friday morning, July 8th, when the Group C field will qualify after a parade, with the six other grids of cars then in turn having their sessions prior to night time free-practice.
In order to avoid long safety car periods, the meeting will be adopting the principle of ‘slow zones’ to reduce the speed of cars while track side recovery is carried out, with a limit of 80kph until cars reach the end of the zone. Patrick Peter also announced was an additional support race - the Group C field running outside the normal structure of the meeting with their own race - which will be for Jaguar XK, Type C, D and E, Mk 1, Mk II and Mk VIII models.
As ever the meeting will feature a host of car clubs and other displays, the 2014 event featuring in excess of 8,000 cars from 160 clubs and of over 80 separate marques. but new for 2016 will be an auction of over 100 classic cars.
Two tempting rates over the weekend will be the Concours Le Mans Heritage Club, which will feature 24 former Le Mans 24 Hours cars from 1923 to today, and for the first time an exhibition of race transporters, a HistoricRacingNews.com favourite already!
