The 24 Hours of Le Mans is exactly what it sounds like: a 24-hour auto race. The race has been described as a cross between traveling circus and an entire season of Formula 1 crammed into one weekend. In other words, it’s amazing and fantastic and not to be missed. But 24 hours is a lot of racing, even for die-hard fans, which is why it’s nice that Camden Thrasher has condensed it to two minutes of epic stop-motion.

Thrasher, who has the great name for a motorsports photographer, made the trek in April to photograph Audi’s campaign in the 84th running of the race. The result is a sop-motion video of 1,158 frames.

Now, you might think shooting a race is relatively easy: point your camera at anything that moves and fire the shutter. But covering something like Le Mans is like running a marathon—it just goes on and on and on. Thrasher started nearly a week in advance, covering things like safety inspections and practice sessions and qualifying. There also are media events and the Driver’s Parade and…. and…

“When the cars aren’t on track that doesn’t mean I have nothing to do. I will be shooting the team working on the cars in their garage, or shooting photos of the track itself, or exploring around trying to find new places to shoot,” Thrasher says.

Although the race is 24 hours—it starts at 3 pm Saturday—Thrasher spends as long as 40 hours on the track, in Audi’s garage and with the drivers. It’s incredibly exhausting; Thrasher says he walked 19 miles during the first half of the race. “I don’t sleep much at all during the race. I might put my head down on my desk when I’m downloading my memory cards, but that’s about the extent of the rest I get,” he says.

Thrasher carried four Nikons: a D800, D300, D3, and D4. He was equally laden with lenses, using a 10.5mm F/2.8, 35mm F/1.4, 70-200mm F/2.8, 300mm F/2.8 and a 500mm F/2.8 to capture every angle of the action. He’d periodically download the images during the day, and at the end of each day import it all into Lightroom. He’d do a little color correction and resizing before adding them to Adobe Premiere, which Thrasher used to do his video cutting, sequencing and audio editing. Between the assignments he did for magazine clients and the stop-motion video for Audi, Thrasher created a whopping 30,000 images.

When the work was done, Thrasher spent a week relaxing in Italy. Then it was back to work, covering a race in Wisconsin.