The importance of sleep at Le Mans: Dr. Elina Haukipuro on how drivers stay alert for 24 hours
- Aaron Carroll
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
In normal sprint format racing, drivers have to keep their reactions honed for an hour or two hours at a time, but in endurance racing - especially at Le Mans - drivers must be able to perform for up to 24 Hours.
DIVEBOMB's Aaron Carroll sat down with Dr. Elina Haukipuro - a sports medicine physician and mental performance coach with experience in vast forms of motorsport such as Formula One, Formula 2 and the World Rally Championship - to find out more about how drivers cope with tiredness and fatigue.
Races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, or the 24 Hour races at the Nürburgring or Spa present drivers with one of the most unique challenges in motorsports. Being able to perform at a high level mentally for so long, at such high speeds.
But one thing that is never thought about enough is the drivers ability to get good quality sleep in such a hectic 24 hour period.
Research shows that driving without sleep for around 24 hours mirrors the effects of being above the legal limit of blood alcohol concentration.
"As soon as you're over that 17, 18, 19 hours, and definitely after 24 hours, the cognition, your reaction time, just critical thinking, making fast decisions, all of that is getting impaired" said Dr. Haukipuro.
With three drivers per crew, splitting the stints may on the surface seem easy, but when you factor in the atmosphere, the noises and the stress levels, it can be hard for drivers to find time to sleep.
Dr. Haukipuro compared this to what your average person would feel; "If you had a poor night's sleep, you slept for a couple of hours or if you have a lovely flight at four o'clock in the morning, you do feel like you are not operating at high performance. That you're checking, where is everything? You feel a little bit discombobulated".
Now try that feeling, but you're doing 210 mph (~340 kph) down the Mulsanne straight in a Le Mans Hypercar in the middle of a five-car LMGT3 battle. The drivers reaction times have to be insanely good, but with a lack of sleep, they can't.
That means that a driver that is tired and groggy, can easily be outpaced by one who has had a proper sleep and it almost fully alert. Put simply, it can be the difference between winning and losing Le Mans, or the difference between a good points finish and crashing out.
So how should drivers combat this?
The immediate answer is just, sleep. But it is so much more complicated than just sleeping whenever you can, and for a random amount of time. During a race like Le Mans, shorter naps can be much more effective than a longer, deep sleep.
"Naps are essential for most drivers just to get a little bit of recovery throughout the driving. But if naps are planned, then ideally they should be max 20 or 30 minutes.
"This is because you then stay in the lighter part of the sleep cycle. So waking up from that means that you will feel more refreshed and you're not in the middle of a deep sleep cycle, which gives you this grogginess. If you've ever had a nap that takes longer, you wake up two hours later, you're really tired, even though you went to take the nap to get more energy.
"So either it's 20 to 30 minutes or going approximately 90 minutes, because 90 minutes means that you're at the end of one sleep cycle. So you've already been in the lighter sleep, the deeper sleep and then coming out of it again. But definitely not the spot in between or longer than that."
Waking up in that groggy state you'd have from sleeping longer is not ideal for a driver. Most of us need a good length of time to fully wake up and become alert, but drivers don't have the luxury of time. Usually, they will wake up and need to perform almost straight away, and any slow reaction can end their teams race.
Another common solution to tiredness for many would be caffeine or sugar, but even here the drivers have to be careful. But there's also no set answer here, because every driver operates differently.
"We can either be a fast metabolizer of caffeine or a slow metabolizer of caffeine. So fast means that you might already within three, four hours have metabolized the same amount of caffeine that someone needs six or up to 12 hours."
This is where a driver having someone like Dr. Haukipuro in their camp really steps up the game. She thinks that understanding the variable biology of each driver is imperative to maximising their performance on track.
"Ideally doing a DNA test and first knowing how much caffeine is actually stored in my body? How long does this last for? This is super helpful because then you can also tactically plan 'I want this caffeine peak to be here performing.'
"Having this kind of tactical knowledge of caffeine is super important."
Knowing and understanding the metabolism allows everything to be meticulously calculated, to avoid having a surge of energy coming after the stint, or ending too early and crashing mid-stint. Much of the same can be said for sugar consumption.
"When we eat sugar, especially if we don't pair it with fibre or fats or protein, it means that it's going to be metabolized quite quickly. So you then just get this surge of energy, and it doesn't last for a long time.
"What you don't want is to be driving in Le Mans at 3am and being already tired because physiologically, your body is telling you 'you shouldn't be awake, you shouldn't be doing this, you should be sleeping' and then having a blood sugar crash on top of that."
Understanding a drivers body on a deeper, more scientific level can unlock so much more potential in a situation like this.
"The more you know how your body responds to things like all kinds of food items, but especially for caffeine and sugar is a really good tool.
"The last thing that you want is to not be focusing on the driving, but focusing on what your body is doing because something is changing. So the more stable you feel from your energy alertness, the better that is."
Alongside caffeine and sugar, the drivers have another great way of staying awake. Adrenaline.
But that also raises a question, how do you come down from an adrenaline filled stint, to sleep in a short space of time?
Dr. Haukipuro says that, while your mind might be fully awake and racing, your body is tired, and it knows that, it still wants and needs the proper recovery time. So while the driver might feel awake due to the adrenaline, their body still wants sleep. To combat that, drivers have to calm the nervous system.
"These are very much trainable skills, but something that needs to be applied way before participating in any of these events. What you can do there, for example, is through breathing techniques to try and like, calm your breathing actively"
She specifically mentioned box breathing here, a method of stress-relief that involves breathing in four-second segments. Inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Methods like this are proven to regulate the nervous system, with the four-second counts distracting the brain from immediate stressors, calming everything down.
Another recommendation she gives is working with all of the senses. Not using any screens, dimming lights, bringing the exact pillow you use at home and even incorporating a smell that your brain can learn to associate with sleep and rest.
Repeating these sort of things over and over, weeks, and possibly even months before the race creates an environment that makes the brain comfortable, and much easier to rest. A place where your nervous system feels like it's at home, when, in fact, it's a motorhome at the back of the Le Mans paddock.
All of this doesn't stop once the checkered flag falls though. No matter how well a driver deals with sleep and fatigue during a 24 hour race, their bodies will still need recovery.
These proper sleep and relaxation methods need to continue into the days after the race, and usually even longer. Most endurance drivers have quite a packed schedule, racing in more than one series and fitting test days in between - some drivers will already be competing in the likes of the NLS and DTM less than a week after finishing up in Le Mans.
"Ideally, maintaining these good habits that you've had before should also continue afterwards. So meaning that banking up on sleep, especially the next couple of days.
"So, not a full on media day or something in the simulator the next day, but at least then trying to postpone that to the evening after or the day after or two days after, just to have like let the body properly rest and especially the mind as well"
24 hour races like Le Mans always present a unique challenge for drivers. Sleeping well can be the difference between winning and losing, but it never gets talked about enough.
People like Dr. Haukipuro work behind the scenes to give the drivers the best chance to shine bright in the spotlight, and take home the winners trophy come the end of the race.
