As practice begins at Le Mans, the sub-text to practice, qualifying, and even the race, is actually a highly refined exercise in target shooting.

Each team has lap times, fuel, tire use and tactical targets in its plan for a successful 24 Hour race.

The host, Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO), has the most significant targets of all. In an effort to control speeds, the ACO establishes target lap times for each class.

For P1 prototypes like Audi, Toyota, Honda, the ACO target is three minutes and 30 seconds per lap of the 8.462-mile circuit.

The ACO adds 15 seconds for the P2 class cars and another 15 seconds, to make it four minutes flat, for the production based GT cars like Corvette, Porsche, Ferrari, and Aston Martin.

Maintaining the spread provides an order of sorts in traffic, pit stops, and attempts to manage the rate of technical gains.

To maintain the target times, the ACO, now teamed with the FIA in the new World Endurance Championship, can add weight, reduce aerodynamics, engine size, air restrictors, or even fuel cell size. All are very big incentives to stay close to the target time.

There is no need for teams to show everything they have on the Test Day, but they must run hard to evaluate set-ups, tires, and fuel usage and meet their own targets and to gain a sense of where they stand for race week.