Lédenon Track Map Poster

In the early 1970s, a lawyer in Nîmes pleaded cases by day and, in the evenings and at weekends, took off his robe to build a racetrack with his wife, with their own money, on a scrubland of rock and garrigue. Lédenon was approved for racing in June 1973, and it is still in the family. Its 3.156 km (1.96 miles) and fifteen turns run counterclockwise through a natural bowl on a rocky plateau near Nîmes.

They laid it over an old motocross track, following the shape of the land, and the result is the most undulating circuit in France, nicknamed the toboggan of the Cévennes. The village takes its name from Letinno, a Gaulish god known only from this village, and the Roman aqueduct that once fed Nîmes crosses its land, near the Pont du Gard.

Almost nothing here is level. Out of La Cuvette, the lowest point, the main straight climbs 34 meters (112 ft), more than ten stories, at gradients of 7 to 13 percent, a slope that looks like a wall from inside the car. A lap of barely 3 km asks for some forty gear changes, the mistral gusts across the rocky hilltop, and it is not easy to learn, since it runs against the clock. Racers have a saying: if you can drive Lédenon, you can drive anywhere.

The poster numbers all fifteen turns and letters in the Triple Gauche, three corners in one, La Servie, the horseshoe, La Cuvette and the rest, with the pit lane in a muted line. Heritage, the vintage clubhouse edition, suits a circuit one couple built themselves and their family still runs. Every corner on it was built by two people who simply loved cars.