The big Saturday night of sports isn’t done just yet off the back of the Super Rugby semi-finals weekend and the end of the Australian Swimming Olympic Trials where the Olympics might not have started in France just yet, but there’s an annual Endurance race going on right now in the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans Endurance Race from Circuit De La Sarthe & it’s back on free-to-air 9Go for another year through the first two hours window. Glad to see Nine have the authentic sports logo watermark with the Olympic Rings on it which looks really nice, especially during an Olympic year like this. I hope they can keep on doing this by having the WWOS badge more often like they do to other sports by treating their free-to-air limited LIVE motorsports coverage better should they be back airing the World Endurance Championship and 24 Hours of Le Mans next year. It’s been a long time coming since Nine didn’t put the WWOS logo at all for their former SpeedSeries coverage including the previous 24 Hour of Le Mans race last year – despite wearing one before at times two years ago until Motorsport Australia re-took the SpeedSeries media rights off ARG that ended the mixed paywall/free experiment & Seven came back to air the races once again from earlier this year. Seven also didn’t have any issues when putting on their sports logo unlike Nine.
Looking at the race itself, it’s been a Ferrari race so far where one car has been leading up front over the first 30 mins-1 hour before another works Ferrari of the same Hypercar factory team got away with the lead after the leading car just couldn’t hold onto outright 1st on the outside. But don’t forget they’ve got greater competition from the US such as the No.31 Porsche Penske team as well as the No.3 Cadillac while we wouldn’t rule out Alpine as well with Mick Schumacher’s (one of the Alpine F1 frontrunners alongside Australia’s own Jack Doohan to replace Esteban Ocon for next season) No.36 running in between 10th-15th for Signatech. If you wish to watch the rest of the 24 Hour Endurance event, Stan Sport is the only place to see all along until the end of Sunday night. For new viewers, it’s a seven day free trial and if you like it, it will cost you $25 a month.
From there, you can also watch on-demand replays and highlights at any time as well as every other World Endurance Championship race LIVE uninterrupted without having to break away with an ad-break or two at all. Although you can watch IndyCar there in the meantime at least until the rest of this season, but keep an eye out for 2025 as they could end up on Foxtel/Kayo once again since the US rights have just changed hands recently where it’s now heading to FOX from NBC.
We also know Leigh Diffey, who called the 24 Hour of Le Mans for Eurosport last year, will be staying with NBC having called the Indianapolis 500 over the last seven years & he’s still expected to replace Rick Allen for their NASCAR Cup Series coverage as their main announcer after the Olympics is over with Track & Field. His first Cup race full-time would be straight after the network finishes its IndyCar tenure at Nashville while The CW will begin airing the Xfinity Series races relatively early at the same time during the Playoffs with Allen it before the network takes full control at least the next seven years going into 2025.
For now, it’s a Ferrari 1-2 up front (No.50 over No.83 a few mins ago) under wet weather going into the evening, then darkness and hopefully bright weather into the next day where both cars really want to win that one ultimate prize.