24 hours of Le Mans : arrival expected at 4 p.m. By then, the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Azerbaijan will also have been raced. Motorsports are still popular while our perception of the car is changing a lot. The 24 Hours of Le Mans, whose start was also given by Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of Total, which provides for the first time this year, a fuel that we are promised without any fossil molecule and 100% sustainable.
Another initiative to make these “24 Hours the greenest in history”, as the organizers say, a low carbon ticket which is given to spectators according to their means of transport, which can offer certain reductions on site. Decryption with the sociologist Jean Viard, research director at the CNRS.
franceinfo: For motorsport, in the current context, is it adapt or die?
John Viard: First the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it’s true that it’s epic when you follow them. When I was a child, we read, we followed it. There were books. I still remember little teenage novels. So it’s an extraordinary imagination because it’s not just speed and endurance, it’s teams, there are all those elements that are both technical. It’s a fantastic adventure, it happens at night and it has a lot of strength as an event.
Afterwards, it is true that the question of the car is complicated. So we have to say one thing simply: we have never had so many cars. More and more ladies are taking the license, since there is a huge gap between the ladies’ driving license and the gentlemen’s license. We are not at all in the process of leaving the civilization of the automobile. We can’t because we built our houses all over the countryside. And 70% of people live in houses with gardens, they have to have a car. We have built a society built on mobility.
Will there ever be a 24 Hours of Le Mans with electric cars? Are we going to achieve that these races are also efforts, these are men who take risks, finally, it has all the values of adventure! Are we going to make it completely ecological? It is complicated. All human activity expends energy.
You have to know how to keep the party going, you have to know how to keep the trip, it’s important to keep pleasures and values. And after, how we make them compatible with an ecological society. But let’s try to make it compatible, let’s not actually try to block everything that may a priori seem contrary to the general evolution. On the contrary, it must be integrated into the change. It’s a bit like going from horse to car, it’s the same type of mutation. There are always horse races, races at Vincennes etc… We are somewhat in the same process.
It’s true that when we think of motorsport today, we think of the smell of gasoline, of roaring engines, of something not really ecological. Do you think that these perceptions can change so that in the future, precisely, events are very different and this is accepted by all enthusiasts?
I think it’s up to professionals to find solutions. Of course, when I remember the noise of my old Alfa Romeo when I was a student, which was a very old model, it’s sure that it’s a very special charm, but we reinvent charm. That’s why I compare it with the horse, because most of us don’t know how to ride a horse anymore. And so we can see how things are changing. But I’m pretty confident that the engineers will manage to keep it fun, because otherwise it won’t work, that’s their job.
Another question linked to these major events, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, like the entire Formula 1 circuit, with the movement of all the teams, of all the equipment, and we can extend to the Olympic Games, the football World Cups, because that questions are being asked by conservationists at that time.
All that may be a mismanagement, an ecological mismanagement. When you think of all the kerosene it moves etc. You, what are you saying? Do you have to look at what you get there too?
I am very much in favor of trying as much as possible to make it less of a mismanagement, but humanity will only win the battle against the climate if it defends values and if it lives together. If we each withdraw into our tent, we will each die in our tent. So I think we have no choice. And what adds value, what gives pleasure, what celebrates, the reunification of humanity like the Olympic Games, but of course it must be protected. That’s where we are man, what, all together.
Of course we know the arrangements, stuff like that. But let’s not forget that it is these major global events that reunite humanity from a cultural point of view, from its common adventure, that’s what can help us win the climate battle together, it doesn’t there is no private climate gain, there are individual actions and everyone’s actions. And if there aren’t any in this game, we’ll all end up disappearing.