Circuit de la Sarthe Track Map Poster

For most of the year, the Mulsanne Straight is just a road. Three quarters of the Circuit de la Sarthe runs on public roads around Le Mans that close for racing only a handful of days a year, and together they make one of the longest circuits in the world: 13.626 km (8.47 miles) and 38 turns, run clockwise.

Le Mans was racing long before its circuit existed: in 1906, the race known as the first Grand Prix was held on closed public roads outside the city. The race that lasts a day and a night began in 1923, on a largely unpaved triangle of 17.26 km (10.73 miles) that ran into the city’s southern suburbs as far as the Pontlieue hairpin, cut from the lap in 1929.

The Mulsanne Straight, Les Hunaudières to the French, once ran unbroken for nearly 6 km (3.7 miles). In 1988 a prototype set the official top-speed record there, 405 km/h (252 mph), on a road that carries everyday traffic the rest of the year, and before the 1990 race two chicanes were added to break it up. Further on lies Indianapolis, a left-hander that owes its name to the American speedway it resembles: it is banked like an oval and, like the speedway in Indianapolis, it once had bricks beneath its asphalt. Along with Arnage, it is one of the few parts of the circuit that have more or less kept their original shape.

Thirty-eight numbers would crowd a line this long, so the poster leaves the turns unnumbered and letters in fifteen names, from the Dunlop Curve to the Ford Chicanes, Indianapolis among them. Midnight, the black edition, suits the hours when all of this is raced in the dark. A day and a night of racing, in one clean line.