Motul celebrates two victories at Le Mans 2024
Incredibly tough, close race sees Motul lubricated and supported teams winning their categories in this year’s Le Mans 24 hours
Manthey EMA Porsche wins inaugural Le Mans LMGT3 category honours
United Autosports takes hard-fought LMP2 win
LMP2 engines from Gibson means all cars in the category have Motul 300V as spec oil
The 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours was one of the closest and hardest fought iterations of this iconic race in recent years. The fight for honours was intense across each of the three categories: Hypercar, LMP2 and LMGT3 – the latter of which replaced the LMGTE category that had been in place for more than a decade. Motul-lubricated partner teams, using the brand’s legendary 300V engine oil, took victory in both the LMP2 category - with the number 22 United Autosports car of Oliver Jarvis, Nolan Siegal and Bijoy Garg - and the LMGTE category, with the Manthey EMA Porsche of Yasser Shahin, Morris Schuring and Richard Lietz.
Motul’s flagship 300V lubricant continues to be the standard by which other competition lubricants measure themselves. Inspired by Aviation industry, Motul used vegetable esters to produce 300V – named in honour of the brand’s 300 race victories – and thus the world’s first fully synthetic motor oil was introduced into the market in 1971. Motul has refined the range over time and it now boasts four different variants, each tailored to specific needs: Power, Competition and Le Mans, the latter designed for maximum reliability.
In this year’s Le Mans, the removal of tyre warmers to heat tyres meant that all the of the cars struggled periodically for grip at what was a colder than usual, and often wet, Le Mans, during the race. Long Safety Car periods meant that most of the cars ran incredibly close across all the categories, so it was a flat-out race to the chequered flag in every category.
Motul’s long standing support of United Autosports bore fruit again this year as the team took its second Le Mans 24 hour LMP2 category victory. It was followed home by another Motul partner team, Inter Europol Racing. All the LMP2 cars are powered by the same 600 BHP 4.2 litre V8 Gibson GK428 engines. As longtime technology partners of Gibson, and this means that 300V is the oil that all the LMP2 cars leave the factory with.
LMGT3, with its wide selection of manufacturers – nine in all – is one of the most competitive of all endurance categories and this lead of this year’s race constantly changed. At the end of 24 hours it was the Motul lubricated #91 Porsche 911 GT3R LMGT3 of Manthey EMA racing that took the category honours, as it had done at the previous round of the WEC, in Spa.
“Le Mans is an incredible test of man and machine every year, but this year’s 24 Hours was so incredibly competitive, it was really going to take something special to win,” enthuses Motul UK Sales and Marketing Manager, Andy Wait. “Huge congratulations, therefore, to all our Motul teams who won, made the podium, or indeed made it to the finish. To have come away victories in both LMP2 and GTE is more than we could have hoped for and is testimony to the huge efforts of our partner teams and their drivers in writing another chapter in the long history of Motul motorsport success.”