“It was almost too good to be true. I remember waking up Monday morning at a hotel in Paris and looking at the newspaper, and thinking, ‘Holy F-bomb, this did happen.’”That was American sports car racing legend Patrick Long’s memory of his amazing win on debut at the 72nd edition...

According to well-worn boxing lore, “A good big ’un will always beat a good little ’un.” Which is also usually true of multi-class sports car racing, in which prototype exotica shares the track with – and holds a performance advantage over – the production-based GT classes. But every rule has...