Scheduling: The 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans

Delayed by three months due to COVID-19, the spectacular 24 Hours of Le Mans takes place this weekend!

As usual, live coverage of the race for UK fans airs on Eurosport, with the official World Feed commentary available via the World Endurance Championship app.

A congested weekend of action, also involving the Tour de France, British Superbikes and World Superbikes, means that their free-to-air station Quest acts as Eurosport’s overflow channel for the Superbikes.

The consequence of that means that Le Mans is not available to UK fans via any free-to-air outlet this year.

Martin Haven, Graham Goodwin and Allan McNish lead the World Feed offering, with Ben Constanduros, Peter Dumbreck, Jamie Campbell-Walter rotating in and out of commentary for the 24 hours.

Down in pit lane, Hayley Duncan and Alexandra Legouix will be grabbing all the interview snippets throughout.

We choose the best action and the best angle, thanks to some 40 cameras along the track and in the pits. It is also possible to put on-air one of the 14 cars equipped with 3 or 4 on-board cameras.

Two ‘cinéflex’, one onboard a helicopter and the other below an airship, a travelling on a 400-meter cable along the pits as well as a mobile ‘hyper-slowmo’, allows us to include exceptional footage.

Brand new motion graphics (already used during the World Endurance Championships) add a significant number of important information to ensure a better understanding of the race.

A selection of radio communication from the teams and the race director will be on-air, to explain and humanize the race.

Day and night over 300 people, who work in shifts during the 30 hours we produce, run this technical set-up to ensure that each broadcaster may offer their viewers all over the world a full coverage of the race.

Producing at the 24H Le Mans means bearing in mind that anything can happen, at any moment. This is why we continuously record from over 75 different image sources to be able to use this on air slightly offline. – 24 Hours of Le Mans

Over on Eurosport, Tom Gaymor leads the commentary line-up from off-site in the UK, joined by Mark Cole, Louise Beckett, Damien Faulkner, Sam Hancock and Chris Parsons.

Supplementing Eurosport’s coverage from on-site are Jennie Gow, Guenaelle Longy and Toby Moody who will be reporting from pit lane.

As always, Radio Le Mans will be doing their thing throughout the Le Mans festival, with John Hindhaugh leading the crew.

In a change to tradition, the race itself starts at 14:30 local time instead of the usual 15:00 local time. In addition, WEC’s cameras are not covering practice one, with coverage kicking in from practice two onwards.

Below are all the details you need, including MotoGP’s second Misano race, and World Rally Championship’s visit to Turkey…

World Endurance Championship – 24 Hours of Le Mans
Also airs live on WEC’s App (£)
17/09 – 13:00 to 17:00 (Eurosport 2)
=> 13:00 – Practice 2
=> 16:00 – Qualifying
17/09 – 19:00 to 23:15 – Practice 3 (Eurosport 2)
18/09 – 09:00 to 10:00 – Practice 4 (Eurosport 2)
18/09 – 10:30 to 11:00 – Hyperpole (Eurosport 2)
19/09 – 09:30 to 11:00 (Eurosport)
=> 09:30 – Warm-Up
=> 10:00 – Road to Le Mans
19/09 – 12:30 to 13:15 – Preview (Eurosport)
19/09 – 13:15 – Race (Eurosport)
=> live coverage continues until 14:00 on 20/09

MotoGP – Emilia Romagna (BT Sport 2)
Also airs live on MotoGP’s Video Pas (£)
18/09 – 08:00 to 10:45 – Practice 1
18/09 – 12:00 to 15:00 – Practice 2
19/09 – 08:00 to 15:15
=> 08:00 – Practice 3
=> 11:00 – Qualifying
20/09 – 07:15 to 14:30
=> 07:15 – Warm Ups
=> 08:45 – MotoE
=> 09:30 – Moto3
=> 11:00 – Moto2
=> 12:30 – MotoGP
=> 14:00 – Chequered Flag

MotoGP – Emilia Romagna (Quest)
21/09 – 18:00 to 19:00 – Highlights

British Superbikes – Oulton Park / World Superbikes – Catalunya
World Superbikes airs live on WSB’s Video Pass (£)
18/09 – 13:25 to 14:55 – WSB: Practice (Eurosport 2)
19/09 – 09:45 to 18:00
=> 09:45 (Eurosport 2)
=> 11:45 (Quest)
20/09 – 12:15 to 18:00 (Quest)
22/09 – 20:00 to 21:00 – WSB: Highlights (ITV4)
23/09 – 19:30 to 21:00 – BSB: Highlights (ITV4)

British Touring Car Championship – Thruxton (ITV2)
20/09 – 11:00 to 18:45 – Races

Speedway Grand Prix – Poland
18/09 – 17:45 to 21:15 – Races (BT Sport 3)
19/09 – 17:45 to 21:15 – Races (BT Sport 2)

Virgin Australia Supercars – The Bend (BT Sport 3)
Also airs live on SuperView (£)
19/09 – 06:30 to 08:00 – Race 1
20/09 – 03:15 to 04:45 – Race 2
20/09 – 05:45 to 07:15 – Race 2

World Rally Championship – Turkey (All Live)
Also airs live on WRC+ (£)
18/09 – 14:15 to 18:15 – Stages 1 and 2 (BT Sport Extra 1)
=> 15:00 – Stage 1
=> 16:18 – Stage 2
19/09 – 06:00 to 16:45 – Stages 3 to 8 (BT Sport Extra 2)
=> 06:47 – Stage 3
=> 08:00 – Stage 4
=> 09:03 – Stage 5
=> 12:47 – Stage 6
=> 14:00 – Stage 7
=> 15:03 – Stage 8
20/09 – 04:15 to 12:45 – Stages 9 to 12 (BT Sport Extra 2)
=> 05:27 – Stage 9
=> 07:00 – Stage 10
=> 09:07 – Stage 11
=> 11:15 – Stage 12 [Power Stage]

World Rally Championship – Turkey
18/09 – 15:00 to 16:00 – Stage 1 (BT Sport 1)
19/09 – 00:00 to 00:30 – Day 1 Highlights (BT Sport 2)
19/09 – 08:00 to 09:00 – Stage 4 (BT Sport 3)
19/09 – 22:45 to 23:15 – Day 2 Highlights (BT Sport 2)
20/09 – 07:00 to 08:00 – Stage 10 (BT Sport 3)
20/09 – 22:15 to 22:45 – Day 3 Highlights (BT Sport 3)
22/09 – 21:00 to 22:00 – Highlights (ITV4)

As always if details change, this article will be updated.


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3 thoughts on “Scheduling: The 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans

  1. Tom Gaymor has got to be the most irritating commentator in the motorsport world right now.

    Doesn’t pay attention, often contradicting his more experienced colleagues, repeating things that others have said mere minutes beforehand. And that’s before considering the way he takes forever to actually say anything.

    Disappointing from Eurosport.

    1. Yes, not watching Eurosport for this reason. Only downside is that the youtube coverage appears to have ceased.

      I think a lot depends on what Gaymor is commentating on, he was OK with the Indy500 covverage a few weeks back

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