Le Mans 24 Hours’ new Hypercar qualifying format explained

The FIA and the ACO have shaken up the qualifying format for the Le Mans 24 Hours, with Hyperpole being split into two parts. Read on to find out how it will work this year.

Rachit Thukral

Updated: 05 Jun 2025

The 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours will feature a revised qualifying and Hyperpole format, as organisers the FIA and the ACO aim to create an “even more spectacular experience” for both competitors and spectators.

As was the case before, all cars across the three classes will take part in the initial qualifying session on Wednesday ahead of the race. However, the structure has been tweaked to give more entries a chance to fight for pole pole position in Hyperpole.

Now, the 15 fastest cars from the Hypercar class, along with 12 each from LMP2 and LMGT3, will advance to the next stage of qualifying, held on Thursday.

Crucially, instead of all 62 entries running together in a single hour-long session, Wednesday’s qualifying has been split into two 30-minute sessions: one dedicated to LMP2 and LMGT3 and the other to Hypercar.

Hyperpole format

Introduced in 2020, Hyperpole has now been divided into two distinct parts, namely H1 and H2, as part of a new knockout system.

Just like the revised Wednesday format, Hyperpole will also feature separate sessions for the Hypercar class and the LMP2/LMGT3 categories.

In H1, the slowest four cars from both LMP2 and LMGT3 will be eliminated, leaving eight cars from each to contest the final shootout in H2.

In the Hypercar session, the five slowest cars will be knocked out in H1, with the remaining 10 progressing to H2 to compete for overall pole.

H1 will last 20 minutes for LMP2 and LMGT3, while the Hypercar H1 will run for 15 minutes.

H2 – the final stage of qualifying – will also be split into two 15-minute segments. LMP2 and LMGT3 will take to the track first, followed by the 10 fastest Hypercars to decide the outright polesitter.

The new qualifying format is exclusive to the Le Mans 24 Hours and will not be adopted at other rounds of the World Endurance Championship, which will continue with the simpler two-stage qualifying system.

Effectively, the updated structure for Le Mans replicates Formula 1’s familiar Q1-Q2-Q3 model: Wednesday’s qualifying session plays the role of Q1, H1 mirrors Q2, and H2 serves as Q3 – albeit under different naming conventions.