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Jul 14, 2023

6 of the Longest motorsport endurance races

These teams are going to need a nap after these incredible vehicular

These teams are going to need a nap after these incredible vehicular competitions and rallies

This weekend sees the 24 Hours of Le Mans (or 24 Heures du Mans) motorsport race continue its reign as the world's oldest active endurance racing event. Heading into a new century of competition, this annual battle decides its victor by giving its trophy to the car which covers the greatest distance in 24 hours.

We’ll have plenty 24 Hours of Le Mans coverage leading up to and after the drop of the green flag this weekend, but we wanted to whet your appetite for the event with a quick history of some other outrageously long motorsport races. Some are long by time, some by distance, but all are designed to be an ultimate test of driver and machine.

For reasons of pure nostalgia, this race holds a large part of this author's hypertensive heart. The traditional Paris-Dakar Rally, known now as the Dakar Rally or simply "The Dakar," originally traced its route between those two namesake cities. For nearly three decades, competitors tore across Europe and Africa, racking up the miles and leaving the continent littered with broken vehicles (and dreams). More than 600 entries started the event in 1988, the same year that defending champion Ari Vatanen's race-prepped Peugeot was stolen by bandits from a service area in Mali.

It all came to a halt in 2008 when the event was shelved thanks to security concerns in Mauritania following the killing of four French tourists. The next year saw The Dakar held in South America, attracting a robust 500-plus competitors. Since 2020, the rally has been held in Saudi Arabia. It has generally accepted five competitive groups of racers: motorcycles; UTVs; quads; cars (which include alien-looking buggies and SUVs); and the brutally large trucks. Distances can stretch up to nearly 1,000 kilometres per day.

Did you know that Canada was once home to an FIA-sanctioned long-distance driving rally? Back in the go-go ‘60s, the Shell fuel company sponsored a series of these events, most of which spanned from Vancouver to Montreal. The start and end points varied over the years, with Quebec City and Halifax popping up some years. The entire race was usually well over 4,000 miles, hence its name; the first event in 1961 clocked in somewhere around 4,350 miles (about 7,000 kilometres) according to that year's route book.

Keep in mind this was ages before GPS appeared in cars, with today's smartphone-driven interfaces telling us exactly where to turn just the stuff of dreams. Infrastructure, car cabin comfort, and engine reliability were also radically different in the those days. In 1967, for example, it is said that 93 cars started, but only 43 finished the rally. Public roads were used to connect special stage rally events, not unlike the method in which today's Targa Newfoundland is organized and operated.

Since your author is an unabashed fan of large rear-wheel-drive coupes with V8 engines, you know the annual NASCAR slugfest that is the Coca-Cola 600 was going to appear somewhere on this list. There are a few of us in the halls of Driving who are old enough (or traditional enough) to recall when this soirée was called the "World 600," prior to a small soft drink company from Atlanta plowing a few marketing dollars into the thing and becoming the race's title sponsor. Held every year at the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway, this 600-miler is the longest race by distance on the NASCAR schedule, and is as much a test of driver endurance as it is of mechanical fitness.

Or at least it was, prior to the dolts at NASCAR instituting a moronic "stage system" which throws a scheduled caution flag every 100 laps, thus breaking up the action and removing the superhuman amounts of endurance required behind the wheel. Yes, the Coke 600 is still a monumentally difficult event, but any NASCAR driver from years past will tell you those additional one hundred miles (compared to a standard 500-mile race) was the element of this race which separated the wheat from the chaff. Now, the event is split up into 150-mile chunks. Whoop-de-friggin-do. Darrell Waltrip is the most winningest driver, finding victory lane in five races — none of which involved artificially generated pee breaks.

Held at the start of this millennium, the classic-car rally race started at the base of London's Tower Bridge. It intended to emulate racers who set out on the 1908 New York to Paris rally — an era in which not many people on this planet had even seen a car, let alone raced one halfway around the world. Technically part of a series called the London to Cape Town World Cup Rally, which has included roughly 20 events since 1997, the 80 Days race covered almost 20,000 miles (32,000 km) over three months, during which competitors airlifted their cars only twice: from Beijing to Alaska; and New York to Marrakesh. Incredible.

In 1907, a newspaper in France threw down le gauntlet by stating "What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?" Called out by the nation's press, several gearheads went and did exactly that — in a time where telegrams were considered cutting-edge technology. Fuel was carried to rally stations in some areas by camel, and it was surmised that several stretches had only ever before been traversed by horse.

A dashing Italian aristocrat won the event using a car with a 7.0L engine, though it is suggested his chauffeur did most of the driving. Subsequent coverage, however, inspired more gearheads to attempt similar challenges, including the 1908 Trans-Atlantic effort mentioned earlier. The fancy-pants FIA organized a Paris-Moscow-Beijing event in which 57 drivers, one-third of the original entry list, finished the almost 10,000-mile journey. Driving a Citroën, a Frenchman named Pierre Lartique finished fourth in the final stage, but held onto his hour-plus lead to secure the overall win.

Let's end our list with an event which, in many respects, is the opposite of FIA-sanctioned events in which dour-faced stewards dole out penalties after scrutinizing a video replay five or six times. Participants may use what's described as a "farcically small vehicle", preferably with an engine size smaller than 1.0L, but organizers will permit 1.2L (though they’ll probably make fun of you). The start and end points are set, but participants are largely on their own. And, oh yeah — teams must raise at least £500 (CDN$835) for charity.

This is not to say the Mongol Rally isn't organized — far from it. This year's event is set to begin mid-July, and there's already a waiting list. The start line is just outside Prague, and, in normal times, the finish line is in Ulan Ude, just outside of Mongolia, to the north of its capital city Ulaanbaatar. This means all teams will continue to drive across vast and empty Mongolia (see that special from The Grand Tour if you don't believe us). Current geopolitical climates mean this year's finish line has yet to be firmed up, thanks to ongoing war and border closures along the usual route.

Whether wheeling an off-road rig over rough terrain, hauling trailers with a pickup truck, or tucking into a sportscar, Matthew is never far from something with four wheels and an engine. He's a member of AJAC and lives in rural Nova Scotia. Find him on Facebook and Instagram @DudeDrivesCars

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