Le Mans Cup
international sports car racing endurance series
The Le Mans Cup, previously the GT3 Le Mans Cup and currently known as the Michelin Le Mans Cup under sponsorship, is an international sports car racing endurance series inspired by the 24 Hours of Le Mans race and organized by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO).
History
The GT3 Le Mans Cup was created in 2016 after the GTC category was dropped from the European Le Mans Series. The new series was designed primarily to increase the number of amateur drivers. The teams' champion automatically receives an invitation to take part in the following 24 Hours of Le Mans in the LMGT3 category.
From the 2017 season, the series adopted a new format with LMP3 and GT3-class cars competing in their respective categories, with the ACO aiming to create a secondary division of LMP3-racing and promoting the best teams from the Le Mans Cup to the European Le Mans Series.
A new LMP3 specification with higher power engines was introduced for the 2020 season; this was found to consume more fuel than predicted, forcing pit stop and stint time rule changes.
The Le Mans weekend originally had a one-hour format in 2017, and has had two 55-minute races every year since 2018. The remaining races originally had a two-hour format, later shortened to 1h 50min for the 2022 season, to enable removal of this second mandatory pit stop.
Starting in the 2025 Le Mans Cup Season, the LMP3 Class will be split into two with the introduction of LMP3 Pro-Am as well as new ACO Generation III LMP3 Built cars will be eligible for the category such as the Ginetta G61-LT-P3 Evo, Ligier JS P325, Duqueine D09, and the ADESS AD25 all of which use a V35A-FTS 3.5L Toyota V6 twin turbo engine and Michelin tyres.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Le Mans Cup” as international sports car racing endurance series. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28807572. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Le Mans Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.