The 24-hour race at Le Mans is one of the highlights of the calendar for motorsports fans and this year around 260,000 spectators are expected to watch in person. But for many, travelling to Circuit de la Sarthe in France still isn’t an option. And by now, it’s too late anyway: the race is happening this weekend.
For the uninitiated, Le Mans is perhaps the toughest motor race there is: an entire day of non-stop racing. It’s gruelling for both car and drivers.
Here’s everything you need to know about catching the action on TV and online.
What time does the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2022 start?
The race itself begins at 4pm local time (France) on Saturday 11 June.
In the UK, that’s a 3pm BST start time, and 10am on the US east coast, and 7am on the west coast.
Obviously, being a 24-hour race, it will conclude at 4pm local time on Sunday 12 June.
Can I watch or stream Le Mans for free?
Yes you can, although you won’t be able to see the entire race live.
In the UK, you can watch it on Quest (Freeview channel 12, or 114 for Quest HD) but only from 2-5pm on Saturday, so only the first two hours of the race.
For more coverage, you may want to watch on the French free-to-air L’Equipe channel. Coverage is from 8.50am-8.30pm on Saturday 20:30, as well as 9:45pm-12.30am.
Then, coverage continues on Sunday 12 June, from 4:30am-4:45pm.
You’ll need to watch via the website, and to do that you’ll need to create an account. Click on the menu, then se connecter. Then click on pas encore inscrit? and enter your email address and a password (which must have at least one uppercase letter, a number and a symbol in it).
Jim Martin / Foundry
If you’re not in France, you’ll also need a VPN to watch, otherwise you won’t see the video at all: NordVPN or Surfshark are both excellent options, and we already checked that the NordVPN’s Paris server successfully unblocks the video.
Of course, commentary will be in French, but if you don’t speak French you can listen to commentary in English separately from the Radio UK website.
Eurosport 1 is free to air in Germany, and the full race will be shown live for German viewers via satellite. If you have a Freesat box and can tune your dish to receive it outside Germany you can watch, but it’s far from simple to watch the German version of Eurosport online, even if you have a VPN.
How can I watch the full 24 hours of Le Mans on TV?
If you’re in Europe, including in the UK, you can watch the full race live on Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 1 HD.
To watch Eurosport 1 (anywhere except Germany) you’ll need the appropriate package or bundle for Sky, BT TV or Virgin. However, if you don’t have any of those services, you can watch Eurosport via the Discovery+ app, but there’s no way to access the channel without paying.
A subscription to Discovery+ costs £6.99 per month or £59.99 per year.
US & Canada
For those in the US and Canada your best option is to watch on MotorTrend TV, a cable channel now owned by Discovery and probably the easiest way to watch the entire race. The race itself starts at 10am EST, or 7am PT. If you don’t have cable, it’s also available on DirecTV Stream, Philo, Hulu, Fubo, Fubo Elite, YouTube TV and Vidgo.
You can also stream to most devices with the MotorTrend+ streaming service which costs $4.99 per month or $44.99 per year. There is a useful seven-day free trial, which of course is enough to watch the full 24 hours of the race.
How can I stream Le Mans 2021 online?
If you want to stream the entirety of 24H Le Mans as a one-off event you can buy a pass on the official WEC website for 9.99 € (around £9). However, this isn’t available to watch in the US or Canada as it is region-locked, and will therefore (again) require a VPN service. Two good choices are NordVPN and Surfshark.
You can also view the stream through the
official 24H Le Mans app for Android and iOS, but like the WEC app, that will also ask you to pay €9.99 to subscribe to watch the race live. It will only give you live timings and some highlights videos otherwise.
