And Colossally That's History: 20+ hours at the wheel - 6 crazy Le Mans drives
The Race F1 Podcast
The Race Media Ltd
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we near the end of another marathon year of motor racing, our history podcast And Colossally That's History thought it was the perfect time to reminisce about marathon performances at motor racing’s most celebrated test of endurance, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Over the course of the episode, Matt and Richard tell the tales of six drivers who spent at least 20 hours (and in one case all 24 hours!) at the wheel during a single 24-hour race.
As you might expect, there are some astonishing stories to be told about how they did it, including the driver who fixed his car with chewing gum, the driver who did nearly the whole race on a diet of oranges, the driver who almost single-handedly put the new Ferrari marque on the map, and the driver who found a novel way to take his, ahem, ‘bathroom breaks’ without anyone noticing…
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello again, friends, and welcome to another episode of, and colossally that's history, with me |
| 0:15.5 | Matt Bishop and me, Richard Williams. |
| 0:17.9 | It's great to be back to reappraise another slice of motor racing history |
| 0:22.3 | with you, Richard. And again, I think we've landed on a rather apt topic because as we record |
| 0:29.8 | this episode, we're nearing the end of another marathon season of motor racing. So what better time |
| 0:36.9 | to look back on some marathon motor racing performances? |
| 0:41.2 | Yes, and we're shifting away from F1 for this one, which we occasionally do, to talk about some of the |
| 0:47.1 | most remarkable driving performances in that legendary motor racing epic, the 24 hours of Le Mans. |
| 0:54.2 | To be clear, we're not going to be chatting about the best drives necessarily, |
| 0:59.1 | more the occasions when drivers went above and beyond in terms of the amount of driving they did. |
| 1:05.8 | Yes, exactly. |
| 1:06.8 | And in fact, all of the drives we're going to focus on in today's episode involve one driver doing 20 plus hours behind the wheel in a 24-hour race. |
| 1:18.2 | I mean, just think of it, Richard, at Le Mans, of all places. |
| 1:22.5 | Anyway, it's a topic that's perfect for our podcast, really, because we can't, even if we wanted to, stray into the modern era. |
| 1:32.5 | Today will be all about Le Mans history. And that's because all the amazing marathon drives we're going to talk about today. |
| 1:40.2 | And there really are some wonderful stories, we promise you, happened before 1953, |
| 1:46.6 | because that's when the race organisers, the ACO, the Automobile Club de Loeste, put in place a rule |
| 1:54.9 | whereby no driver could drive more than 80 consecutive laps or more than 18 hours in total. Today, by the way, |
| 2:03.8 | that rule has been adjusted to a maximum of 14 hours in total and no more than four hours |
| 2:09.4 | driving at a time within a six-hour period. Yeah, and it was actually down to one of the performances |
| 2:15.9 | we're going to talk about later that that rule was introduced. |
... |
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