This is a match made in Emirati heaven. Tearing around the French countryside in high-end sports cars for hours and hours. Till you literally can’t stand driving 175 mph anymore.

Le Mans, how had you never met the UAE?

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is one of the half-dozen best-known automobile races in the world. The Indianapolis 500 is another, and then maybe Daytona (though it is way, way, way bigger among Yanks than it is in the wider world; even Euros know Indy, though), maybe Monaco, the GP at Nurburgring, the British GP at Silverstone …

Le Mans, however, is the world’s greatest sports car race. Nothing close to it. A serpentine track in the midst of forested central France. Where people have been driving the greatest and fastest sports cars since 1923.

Dangerous. Oh, yes. It isn’t motorsports if it isn’t dangerous. Fast. And the beauty of Le Mans … it goes on for a full day. Into the night and through it and into the day. (Your car needs headlights!) It needs to hold together for 3,000 miles — the distance the leaders generally travel from 3 p.m. Saturday until 3 p.m. Sunday. (Covering a distance greater than the width of the U.S.)

And a weird thing about this race? As unattainable as the vehicles are to Regular Folks, at least they bear a resemblance to the little imports we putt-putt around in.

Formula 1 is basically rockets on wheels meant to carry one small man, cramped in a cockpit, for about 90 minutes. Nascar runs out a bunch of souped-up somethings under the plastic shell meant to resemble something from the Ford showroom. Not like you can put child safety seats in the back. Dragsters are jets stuck (usually) to the Earth. Nothing like your Toyota.

A Le Mans sports car lasts more than an hour or two. Which makes them closer to what all of us know … which quickens the pulse a bit.

Take a look, in this photo gallery, at the vehicles that ran this year. Futuristic, sure. Stylish. Very stylish. Bearing a bit of a resemblance to a predatory insect of some sort. A big spider, perhaps?

But wickedly fast and nimble. Just how we like them here in the UAE, the home of long, fast, flat freeways known for speeding. (A country of the I-15 between Vegas and Barstow, basically. Let ‘er rip.)

Abu Dhabi is the country cousin of the UAE, at least compared to Dubai and its culture of consumption for consumption’s sake. But even here in (comparatively) workaday Abu Dhabi I can tell you where the Lamborghini dealership is. Where the BMW showroom is. And so on right through the expensive European cars meant to go very fast.

Emiratis tend to buy these cars. Take a drive between the capital and Dubai, and several high-end sports cars will blow past you.

Emiratis ought to be the perfect market for Le Mans. For finding sponsors, for finding interest — for finding drivers.

This year, for the first time, an Emirati drove in Le Mans. Khaled Al Qubaisi, is his name. He had never driven professionally until 2009, when the F1 track here opened.

But he has been working at this sports car thing for a while — probably a continuation of tearing down Sheikh Zayed Highway since he was 16. He was among the winning drivers of the Dubai 24 Hours the past two years, and then this opportunity to drive in Le Mans came up, and there he went.

Before the race, in this preview piece by our own Ali Khaled, Al Qubaisi confessed to some nerves and to a realization that Le Mans is about much more than a fast lap. It’s 24 hours at high speeds. Things can go wrong. (As it turns out, a Danish driver died after a crash in the opening laps.)

After the race, Al Qubaisi he seemed both elated and exhausted. He had done seven hours. As The National’s man in France noted, in this report from the track, if a guy does seven hours at the wheel … it’s like driving several F1 races in the space of one day.

Al Qubaisi also suggested more Emiratis ought to pursue the sport. And I believe they will.

This is a country that loves cars, that loves sports cars and has lots of guys who can afford to buy them — and set up teams, provide support.

Look for the UAE to be a growing presence at Le Mans. Now that it has happened, I could see a dozen Emiratis driving there in the 2018 edition of the race. I could see one winning it in the next 10 years.