LMP1

LMP1, Le Mans Prototype 1, was the World Endurance Championship's top class from the championship's 2012 revival until 2020. In its hybrid heyday, Audi, Toyota and Porsche built the fastest endurance cars in history: four-wheel-drive hybrid prototypes whose pace the sport has not seen since.

The class died of its own budgets. Audi and Porsche withdrew within two seasons of each other, leaving Toyota against privateers under an equivalence formula that never quite balanced. The Hypercar class that replaced it was designed around one lesson: cap the spending first. Most outright circuit records in our archive still belong to LMP1.