Unsurprisingly for a test of endurance that has been around for nearly a century, the Le Mans 24 Hours has had many heartbreaking late-race retirements. Given the amount of effort - physical and mental - that goes into the event, any failure to finish is felt keenly, but some really stand out.
For this list, we've picked out the saddest and most dramatic. The story of the victim's race prior to the failure has been taken into account, as has the potential result that was lost.
Disqualifications have not been included, so these are the mechanical problems and mistakes that help demonstrate that Le Mans is one of the hardest races in the world.
Pedro Lamy, Paul Dalla Lana and Mathias Lauda formed one of the best GTE Am combinations in the World Endurance Championship in the second half of the 2010s. The Aston Martin trio scored 13 victories between 2015-19, taking the GTE Am crown in 2017.
And yet success in the 24 Hours always eluded them, with 2015 surely being the most painful failure. The pre-race favourites dominated the event to the point "that the Aston's triumph turned into a formality hours before the race's end," reckoned Autosport.
But going into the final hour, Canadian entrepreneur Dalla Lana - one of the best bronze-graded drivers - lost control at the Ford chicane on old tyres, on his out-lap. The Vantage was severely damaged in the ensuing crash, handing victory to the SMP Racing Ferrari that Russians Viktor Shaytar and Aleksey Basov shared with Andrea Bertolini.
Lamy had at least won the GTE Am category in 2012 with Larbre's Chevrolet Corvette, but Dalla Lana never did get to taste success at Le Mans before announcing his retirement in 2023.
Ferrari was the dominant marque at Le Mans in the 1960s and it often seemed simply a case of which one would win.
"This might have led to a relatively uninteresting 1961 Le Mans, but this was not so due to two factors," wrote Anders Ditlev Clausager in Le Mans 1923-99, Volume One. "The spirited performance of the Rodriguez brothers, and the appearance of the 2.4-litre mid-engined car driven by Richie Ginther and Wolfgang von Trips."
Ricardo and Pedro Rodriguez were young but already had Le Mans experience - having shared a car in 1959 - and, most importantly, were rapid. Armed with a North American Racing Team three-litre Testa Rossa, they battled the works Testa Rossas of Olivier Gendebien/Phil Hill and Willy Mairesse/Mike Parkes, and the more frugal Ginther/von Trips 246 SP (another factory Ferrari) for much of the race.
The NART car moved to the front after the early skirmishes, but the lead went back and forth even after rain arrived on Saturday evening. Mairesse/Parkes and von Trips/Ginther lost time during the night, creating a straight fight between Gendebien/Hill - winners in 1958 - and NART. After 14 hours, just 10s separated them.
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On Sunday morning the Rodriguez brothers lost nearly half an hour with a misfire, falling to fourth, but they now upped their pace to recover. They were still striving valiantly when the V12 cried enough with two hours to go.
There's wasn't the only late failure in 1961 - the Jean Kerguen/Jacques Dewez Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato failed at its final stop - bit it was the most keenly felt.
"All the time, the crowds were rooting for the young Mexicans and showed their disappointment unrestrainedly when the car came in to retire," reported Autocar. "Without the Rodriguez boys it would have been a considerably duller Le Mans."
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Sadly, Ricardo - who had set the fastest lap - would only contest one more Le Mans before being killed at the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix. But Pedro would go on to win the race in 1968, with Lucien Bianchi in a John Wyer Automotive Engineering Gulf Ford GT40.
Stung from its defeat the year before but boosted by investment from Woolf Barnato, 1924-winner Bentley had three cars at the 1926 24 Hours.
All three ran near the front, but two suffered engine failures. That left the Sammy Davis/Dudley Benjafield three-litre Sport, fitted with lightweight body among various other racing tweaks, to battle the homegrown machinery.
Its pace was increased when the other Bentleys dropped out and the car was homing in on the second-placed Lorraine-Dietrich of Gerard de Courcelles and Marcel Mongin when Davis climbed in for the final stint. He caught Mongin with half an hour to go and, despite fading brakes, made a bid at Mulsanne Corner.
Davis went in too hot and slid into the sandbank. The race finished before he could get it out, despite Mongin's offer of assistance, and although the car had covered enough distance to be fourth, it wasn't classified. Lorraine scored a 1-2-3, but this entry has a significant postscript.
Most of the frontrunning French manufacturers skipped the 1927 24 Hours, making Bentley the pre-race favourite. The British firm duly won, but it was not a straightforward victory: most of the team was wiped out in the famous White House smash and the sole survivor - 'Old Number 7', the very car that Davis had put in the sandbank the year before - faced a challenge from the three-litre Aries of Jean Chassagne and Robert Laly.
The multi-car White House incident, which happened on Saturday evening, involved all three factory Bentleys. Davis, again sharing with Benjafield, managed to extricate his car, but the Aries moved into the lead.
The Bentley's chassis frame and front axle was bent, but the Aries was the only other big-engined car in the race so the duel was on. While Davis/Benjafield struggled to keep their Bentley together, the Aries looked set to win until it lost 25 minutes early on Sunday afternoon when the starter motor jammed. Davis got back onto the lead lap and an exciting finish looked likely.
But the battle was resolved with less than two hours to go when the Aries stopped with a broken distributor, making it another contender for this list. The sole serious French challenger had failed, leaving the battered Bentley to avenge its 1926 heartbreak and beat the second-placed 1100cc Salmson by over 200 miles.
"We talked about how to drive it and we both drove it with kid gloves," recalled Vic Elford about his drive with Richard Attwood in the new Porsche 917 in 1969.
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Even Porsche didn't believe the under-developed, ill-handling 4.5-litre monster would last 24 Hours, but Elford disagreed. While Rolf Stommelen took pole and set off at a frantic pace in the sister car, Elford and Attwood aimed to get the 917 to the finish. Attwood has suggested in the past that Elford still wanted to push on, but that's not Vic's view.
"I was convinced that if we drove it very carefully and didn't take any risks it could finish," explained Elford, whose account is backed up by contemporary reports. "And if it finished, because it was so vastly superior in terms of speed to everything else, we'd win.
"It was 25mph quicker than anything any of us had ever driven. And it was very difficult to drive. Richard hated it! I liked it because it was so much quicker than anything else. The fact that it was a little bit more difficult to drive didn't really bother me because I was used to driving unstable cars from my time in rallying."
The pacesetting Stommelen/Kurt Ahrens Jr 917 and Jo Siffert/Brian Redman 908/2 were in trouble within the first four hours, whereupon Elford/Attwood took over.
And there they stayed for hour after hour. With four hours to go the 917 was not only still running, it had a four-lap lead. Then transmission problems struck. The bellhousing had cracked and the car was retired.
"A storm of sympathetic cheering marked its progress past the pits of all its rivals, for it was the sad end to a great drive by Elford and Attwood," reported Motor.
For Elford, it remained one of his biggest disappointments: "Everybody told us it was going to break and I was convinced we could make it last and win. And three hours from the end it broke - that was the worst 917 moment."
Porsche would have to wait one more year to break its Le Mans duck, but despite twice winning his class, Elford never managed that elusive outright win.
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Ralf Kelleners probably wouldn't be the first name that springs to mind when it comes to unfortunate drivers at Le Mans. But twice he suffered failures that are worthy of this list - in consecutive years.
The first came with Porsche in 1997. The 911 GT1 Evo h Source: Autosport