After many attempts to bring people to the 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans, the decision has been made that no spectators will be in attendance to the race.
In June, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest were confident that they would be able to have a restricted number of fans at the track, suspending the sale of any new tickets and allowing the 50,000 fans who had already purchased tickets to still attend. In was their plan to still be able to accommodate for a fifth of the usual capacity, with around ten ‘fan villages’ that would restrict fans from moving around the circuit.
However, the rise of Coronavirus cases in France has forced the ACO to move the entire event behind closed doors, meaning that no fans will be able to access the circuit for the 88th rendition of the blue-riband event.
“Over the past few weeks, we have looked at many ways in which we could hold our event in September with fans present, albeit in limited numbers.” President of the ACO, Pierre Fillon said of the announcement. “However, given the constraints involved in organising a festival-scale event over several days in the current situation, we have opted with the local government authorities to hold the race behind closed doors.
“There were still too many question-marks regarding health and safety. We know that our fans will be as disappointed as we are by this decision but, with public health in the balance, it really wasn’t a difficult call to make.”
The ACO has promised that fans will have more access to the event through the Le Mans digital platforms as they will not be able to go to the track, but it is safe to say there will be a very different atmosphere, as all sports are finding in 2020, to this Le Mans race in comparison to the past.
