Courage Compétition

Courage Compétition was a racing team and chassis constructor company now owned by Oreca, based in Le Mans, France, near the Circuit de la Sarthe.

In 1981, along with Jean-Philippe Grand, Courage's Lola-BMW managed to finish the race and take victory in the under 2-liter sport class.

With this success, Courage decided to found his own company and began building prototype chassis with which he could compete at Le Mans.

Debuting at the 1982 24 Hours of Le Mans, Courage's first C01 chassis participated in the also new Group C class using a Ford Cosworth DFL V8.

The team also earned the sponsorship of Primagaz to help financially, while the chassis would be renamed Cougar instead of Courage, a trend which would continue for many years.

Following this success, and believing that his chassis and team were capable of succeeding at Le Mans, Yves Courage officially retired from driving in order to concentrate on running the factory.

Unfortunately for 1988, the team was not able to follow up on its success, failing to finish any of its three entries at Le Mans and only managing to score points in a single World Sportscar Championship round.

This was quickly reversed for 1989 as the team managed to win the C2 class at Le Mans with a 14th-place finish, and take 11th place in the World Sportscar Championship by scoring points in over half of the races that season.

Due to rule changes in sportscar racing, Courage was shuffled to the C2 class (cars complying with the older rules) for Le Mans in 1991 and C3 (a class for Porsche-powered cars) in 1992, and no longer able to run in the diminishing World Sportscar Championship due to their continued usage of the Porsche turbocharged Flat-6, which was no longer legal in WSC.

Henri Pescarolo would keep the Porsche-powered Courages alive into 1999 when he raced an older chassis for his newly founded team and would achieve an unlikely 9th-place finish.

This chassis would debut at the 1000km of Le Mans exhibition race and take class victory and 4th overall, behind Pescarolo's 2nd-place finish.

These modified cars would show great success leading into the 2004 season, where both Pescarolo and Courage began competition in the new Le Mans Endurance Series.

In 2006, Courage Compétition as a team became a two car effort in the Le Mans Series, with major backing from Yokohama Rubber Company and Mugen Motorsports.

The new Courage suffered scathing reliability issues with the Mugen engine, which hampered their chances of taking an overall win despite being a competitive car.

In LMP2, Courage's customer C65s would also claim the Le Mans Series team's championship in the hands of the Barazi-Epsilon squad.

In the American Le Mans Series, Mazda's official factory effort used a C65 to finish 3rd place in their teams championship.

Thus their new cars, dubbed the Pescarolo 01, no longer bear any relation to Courage chassis, although the two teams continued to aid one another in development.