Tonight, 650 people will be working to open to transform several public roads in and around Le Mans into a racing circuit.

Some 1500 linear meteres of safety barriers, just like the ones on motorways, have to be installed temporarily, dismantled and sometimes replaced in a hurry if a car comes off the track and damages one.

As well as the barriers, wire fencing is also installed on a 2-kilometre stretch of the circuit, a job that occupies a hundred people for several hours. “At Test Day, two weeks before the race, the warm-up is at 09:00”, says Thierry Moreau, who is in charge of the maintenance at the circuit. However, ACO staff use the test day as a rehearsal for race day and make sure it is ready for 07:00.

The roads are closed at 04:00. Then the ACO staff set to work to install the rails and fences and at the same time take down the road signs and other signposts that are superfluous to the race. “We put almost everything back up between the test day and the practice sessions. All public road circuits have the same constraint. It’s the same in Monaco.”

The whole set-up is painstakingly prepared so that the circuit is ready within three hours. "We started planning on 16 May," says Ghislain Robert, Director of Le Mans Resort. "That’s when we go around the circuit and drop off the barriers at the relevant spots."
Aside from the rails and fences, there are also hundreds of posts to hold them up. “We spend three weeks testing everything. We mount and dismantle the whole set-up to make sure that it all slots together and we don’t have any parts missing on the day,” says Moreau. "All the parts are numbered so we know if there is a piece of the puzzle missing!"

There is also a team of fifty electricians who set up the lighting around the circuit. Another team puts stickers on the circuit to guide the drivers and if the track is wet, it has to be dried first. The equipment for the 70 marshal posts also has to be distributed: the powder to absorb oil on the track, panels, extinguishers. Some 450 officials, known as “jalonneurs” are posted around the circuit to dissuade potential trespassers.

At the end of the operation, the circuit is swept and the grass verges cut. All in all, setting up a circuit is no mean feat! It involves hundreds of people in a huge team effort.
And so far, the dream team has always got a result. “I’ve been in charge of the operation since 1992 and we’ve always been ready on time”, says Moreau proudly.