How do driver changes work in endurance racing?
Endurance cars are shared by two, three or four drivers. How stints and driver changes work, why the split between drivers is rarely even, and the rules that stop one driver doing everything.
An endurance race is too long for one driver, so the car is shared. Two drivers is normal in shorter GT races, three is normal in the top endurance championships, and some budget endurance cars carry six.
How many drivers share a car
Counting every driver credited with the same car in the same race since 2024:
| Series | Average drivers per car | Most in one car |
|---|---|---|
| Nürburgring 24 Hours | 3.77 | 4 |
| 24H Series | 3.60 | 5 |
| American Endurance Racing | 3.05 | 6 |
| European Le Mans Series | 2.96 | 3 |
| WEC | 2.95 | 3 |
| Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie | 2.67 | 4 |
| IMSA WeatherTech | 2.63 | 4 |
| GT World Challenge Europe | 2.48 | 4 |
| Super GT | 2.12 | 3 |
| IMSA Pilot Challenge | 2.08 | 3 |
| GT4 America | 2.00 | 2 |
| British GT | 2.00 | 2 |
Crew size follows race length. The Nürburgring 24 Hours runs through the night on a lap of about 25km, and nearly every car carries four drivers. GT4 America and British GT run shorter races built around a single driver change, and every car has exactly two.
Stints and changes
A stint is one continuous spell at the wheel. It usually lines up with a tank of fuel and ends at a pit stop. A driver can run two or three stints in a row before handing over, which teams call double or triple stinting.
The change itself happens during a stop. One driver gets out, the next gets in and is strapped in, and every second spent doing that is time lost to the cars that did it faster. Teams practise it the way they practise tyre changes.
The split is almost never even
Timing data for some championships records which driver completed every lap. The Zenith Racing Series endurance race at Homestead-Miami on 5 September 2026 is a clean example. These are the laps each driver completed in the top three ZP2 cars:
| Car | Driver | Laps |
|---|---|---|
| #80 Nimbus Racing | Ethan Barker | 107 |
| #80 Nimbus Racing | Gavin Vaughan | 76 |
| #59 Stratus Racing | Dakota Dickerson | 92 |
| #59 Stratus Racing | Clay Magouyrk | 91 |
| #3 Round 3 Racing | Oleg Gorshkov | 108 |
| #3 Round 3 Racing | Jon McClintock | 38 |
| #3 Round 3 Racing | Gavin Poteet | 34 |
The #59 car split its race almost exactly in half. The winning #80 car did not: 107 laps against 76. In the #3 car, one driver completed 108 of the 180.
Teams split a race unevenly for ordinary reasons. Rules may set a minimum for some drivers, one driver may be better in traffic or at night, or a plan may change after a problem. The timing sheet records the laps and not the reasons, and we do not know why any of these three cars split the way they did.
The rules that limit drive time
Left to itself, a team would keep its quickest driver in the car as long as possible. Endurance championships write rules against that in both directions.
A maximum stops one driver doing too much. At Le Mans in 2017, no driver could drive more than four hours in any six-hour period, or more than 14 hours in total.
A minimum makes every entered driver actually drive. The same 2017 rules required each driver to do at least six hours in three of the four classes.
Heat has its own rule. At Le Mans in 2017, once the ambient temperature reached 32°C in a car without air conditioning, a continuous spell at the wheel was capped at 80 minutes, with at least 30 minutes' rest before the next.
These limits change between seasons and differ between championships. The sporting regulations for a specific race are the authority.
What it means for a driver's record
Three drivers who share a car share one finishing position, and the results sheet treats them identically. It cannot tell a driver who carried the car from one who did the minimum.
Our convention is that every driver takes the car's result, which is also how championships award points. Where lap-by-lap timing exists, the real split can be measured, as it can for the race above. For most endurance racing that data is not published, and the shared result is all there is.
Crew sizes computed from the RacerDB index. Lap counts from Al Kamel Systems timing for the Zenith Racing Series. Le Mans 2017 driving-time rules from the FIA WEC. More on shared results in why comparing drivers across series is hard.