Is Artificial Intelligence already an essential factor in winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans?

Is Artificial Intelligence already an essential factor in winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans?

More or less discretely, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Mistral and other AI software is gradually becoming inevitable. It’s everywhere. All the time. Teams entered for the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans already depend on the staggering abilities of the technology.

It’s the modern-day Swiss Army knife. Like an infinite version of the famous do-it-all tool, artificial intelligence is changing everything, developing exponentially and affecting all fields. We can’t do without it.

The Genesis GMR-001 is the only newcomer to the Hypercar class this year. How much of its design was achieved thanks to artificial intelligence: 5% or closer to 50%? A small part, according to François-Xavier Demaison, technical director of the Korean team: “It’s difficult to apply to aerodynamics at this level of endurance racing, but that’s one of the aspects we need to develop. We use it in rallying, so we’ll use it in endurance, for sure.” The Frenchman is evasive when it comes to citing the obstacles to using AI. To analyse data, you have to feed the data to the tool. And that throws up a confidentiality issue, which, as things stand, is a stumbling block as far as many 24 Hours of Le Mans teams are concerned. TDS Racing #14 Oreca 07 (LMP2) track engineer Arthur Trouttet: “We don’t use it enough, to be honest. But we are starting to. For the moment, our team has nothing that’s directly linked to and AI tool. But we use it in the preparation phase.”

Five-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota applies AI in its endurance programme. David Floury, Toyota Racing technical director: “We use the platforms that exist, but we also have the internal capabilities and a whole department dedicated to artificial intelligence. Development has been exponential in the past four or five years. First of all, we use it to transcribe our meetings, which are always multilingual at Toyota. It’s essential, because there are always attendees from Japan, Europe and the rest of the world. That’s the first aspect, but the growth on technical aspects is fast too.”

“We haven’t tried yet, so I can’t say. On the other hand, I can tell you that when you ask AI to analyse a rulebook, its ability to summarise the sporting and technical rules is quite surprising. We haven’t reached the point where we design a car with AI only, but I think it could happen in the future.” To what degree does the new TR010 Hybrid benefit from artificial intelligence? We don’t know. But one thing is for sure, all racing cars have an element of AI in them.

Once the car is on the track, AI proves essential again. “We use it to analyse large volumes of data quickly. We don’t totally base our decisions on it yet. However, it helps with strategy and tactics thanks to its analytical abilities.”

So, what do we have to look forward to in years to come? “On every level, in design, car development, operations and strategy, it will continue to expand, to be omnipresent,” concludes David Floury.