The FIA Sportscar World Championship was in serious difficulty. The 1991 season had drawn poor entries and hostile promoter relations, and at the close of the year both Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz withdrew from the series, stripping two of its headline acts. In March 1992, Peugeot, Mazda and Toyota each paid three million dollars to FISA to keep the championship alive.
The ACO was forced to improvise the entry list. The old Group C cars returned as Category 2, but FISA restricted that class to marques with a current or past SWC connection — admitting Jaguar and Toyota customer teams but excluding the Porsche 962. Porsches were admitted in a new Category 3 with their original 900 kg weight limit restored, but with the fuel allowance slashed from 2,550 to 2,140 litres — effectively neutering their challenge. A Category 4 was created for low-powered national trophy sportscars. Even with these extensions, 44 entries produced only 30 scrutineered cars, and 28 started.
Peugeot's 905 Evo 1-bis was the dominant machine on paper. The updated car had a new nose, repositioned radiators, xenon headlights producing a 300-metre beam, and an engine strengthened specifically for endurance rather than sprint use following six full-distance tests at Paul Ricard.
Philippe Alliot set a blistering pole time of 3:21.2 — three seconds faster than the 1990 pole benchmark set by Blundell's 1,000-plus horsepower Nissan — demonstrating the aerodynamic advances of the new generation. Yannick Dalmas qualified second in the sister car. Toyota claimed third and fourth with their new TS010, designed by Tony Southgate and powered by a 660 bhp 3.5-litre V10. Mazda's MXR-01, based on the Jaguar XJR-14 chassis with a Judd V10 fitted, qualified seventh.
The BRM marque made a surprise Le Mans return with the P351, a new project built around a 3.5-litre V12, but its preparation was so troubled — a missing differential fitting lost the entire first day of practice — that lead driver Wayne Taylor would effectively have to race alone if the car survived.
Heavy rain at the start transformed the race. Volker Weidler exploited the Mazda's superior performance in the wet, making bold passing moves at Tertre Rouge to take the lead within twenty minutes. Once the Peugeots fitted matching Michelin wet-weather tyres, Derek Warwick and Yannick Dalmas moved ahead, but the conditions punished the Toyotas on Goodyear rubber severely, pulling the field apart.
The night hours were miserable. Visibility was extremely poor: Andy Wallace described driving alongside another car on the straight with neither able to see anything beyond the spray. Cars slid off the track repeatedly. The second Mazda aquaplaned heavily at the Porsche Curves, putting Yojiro Terada into the barriers with a broken front suspension and mild concussion. The BRM's troubled race ended in a pit fire at 9:45 pm.
At 8:45 am, with the rain finally clearing and Peugeot's lead standing at 25 minutes, Warwick stopped on the Hunaudières straight with the ignition cutting out. Three restarts and a slow return to the pits cut the margin to fourteen minutes and replaced the electronics packs, but the lead held.
The final hours saw continuous mechanical attrition. Gearbox and engine failures shuffled positions constantly. Lammers set the fastest lap of the race in the Toyota but could not get the car restarted from pit stops and slipped to eighth. Peugeot's third car retired. The Mazda's gearbox began failing with several hours remaining and the crew were driving without first, third and sixth gear by the finish.
Derek Warwick was given the honour of driving the Peugeot to the line. The crowd invaded the track, blocking the cars from taking the chequered flag, and the field was diverted to parc fermé. Warwick, Dalmas and Mark Blundell won with a distance of 4,787.20 km at 199.3 km/h — below 200 km/h for the first time in several years, reflecting the attrition and caution imposed by the rain. Kenny Acheson, Masanori Sekiya and Pierre-Henri Raphanel were second in the Toyota; Sekiya thereby became the first Japanese driver to claim an outright Le Mans podium. Mauro Baldi, Alliot and Jean-Pierre Jabouille were third in the second Peugeot. The Mazda of Johnny Herbert, Bertrand Gachot and Mauricio Sandro Sala salvaged fourth despite its gear failures.
Forty-eight hours after the finish, ACO president Michel Cosson announced that the club would not apply to participate in the World Championship in 1993, ending the FIA's attempt to run a global sportscar series under those regulations. The FIA subsequently contracted the 1992 SWC calendar from ten rounds to six and closed the series. Charles Zwolsman, who had entered two Lola-Judds, was arrested on bail violations eight days after the race and imprisoned, collapsing the Euro Racing team and effectively ending Lola's ambitions as a customer sportscar constructor. Peugeot's victory was the first for a French manufacturer since Jean Rondeau's home triumph in 1980, and the first ever for a 3.5-litre V10 car — a landmark for the new formula even as the championship it underpinned was dissolving around it.
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