48 Hour Endurance Race

[John B]

For those who think a 6-hour race is a bit tame; a 12-hour race is moderately challenging; 24-hours is slightly tougher; then check this out ... http://maxiendurance48.com/ ... and you thought that Le Mans was tough!

[nigel watts]

Wow. Imagine how many drivers needed for each car & the support crews will be enormous. The logistics will be mind boggling.
Good luck with that!!

[EType]

I think I got an email from one of the local motorsport services companies saying they were putting a team in....

[ERC]

Cost of fuel for running that long?

[stubuchanan]

In the late 1960's and early 1970's there was an event run at the Nurburgring called the "Marathon de la Route" which was an 84-hour race on the 28 km combined North and South circuits.

It had its origins years earlier as a rally called the Liege-Rome-Liege Rally which started and finished at Liege in Belgium. They didn't have special stages in those days, just impossible time schedules so the whole thing became a race. Eventually they weren't allowed to run it to Rome and back, so Zagreb and then Sofia(in Bulgaria) was substituted, making it even hairier.

In the mid-60's civilisation caught up with the organisers, and it morphed into a 3 1/2 day race, with teams of 3 drivers, for saloon and ?GT cars. The 1970 race was 86 hours for some reason and Porsche 914's took 1-2-3.

http://s6.postimage.org/6fc9dujqp/Marathon_d_l_Route_1970.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

Hope I'm not offending anyone's copyright. Will remove immediately if I am.

Stu

[John B]

I see that the March 2013 '48 Hour Maxi Endurance' in Spain now has 40 teams registered ... including a Seat Leon Super Copa entered by Dave Taylor's, Hampton Downs-based, 'Motorsport Services'.

This is going to be a bloody tough event! They're estimating that the race winner could cover 5,000kms in the 48 hours - if they have a perfect race without incidents.

Teams can run 7 or 8 drivers (up to 8 hours each), or 5 or 6 drivers (up to 10 hours each). The minimum driving time for a driver must be 2 hours to be classified, and the maximum continuous driving time is 2 hours.

The entry list so far (there are still 31 more spaces available on the grid) is really diverse, ranging from Le Mans Prototypes and Porsche GT3R's, to a Viper, KTM X-Bow, Sirocco, BMW M3 E46, Caterham, and even a few Renault Clios.

So if you have a spare €24,848 to enter; plus at least 5 drivers; plus a small fortune for consumables & logistics; then it would be great to see a classic racing! Maybe a Greenwood Corvette (Roger), a Mustang (Dale), a Camaro, or a McLaren M20 ... oh wouldn't that be great to see!!