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Le Mans 1999 - The Tourists' Story

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We were looking forward to a good meal at the auberge and the weather was good enough for us to be able to eat outside.  The auberge has a spectacular cheese-board, by the way!

The Tourists pose for a team photo, kindly taken by our excellent waiter.   Outside the auberge on Saturday morning, most of the team line up for another photo (Jim, Alan, Pierre, Clive, Mark, Martin, Robert and Ian), with our friendly waiter in the background!

After our meal it was down to the Bar St. Martin for beer and calvados (rather a lot of calvados for me, actually!) and some serious competition on the table football.

I guess it was around 2 am before those who had stayed for the football finally rolled back to the auberge for some sleep - as always, wonderful preparation for Le Mans!  

After walking around Vendôme for a while in the morning, we set off for Le Grand Lucé, where Saturday night was to be spent.  After getting a few beers in at the Hotel Restaurant Le Cheval Blanc, it was up into the square for lunch before finally getting into the cars for the journey to the circuit.

In the bar at Le Cheval Blanc at Le Grand Lucé - always time for another beer!    One of my favourite pictures from Le Mans 1999 (although I'm not sure that Pierre would agree!). Yes, this is Pierre with his French tart!

On our arrival at the circuit at about 1 pm, we had tremendous difficulty getting into the garage rouge and Ian had to park in the overflow car park some distance away.    This year, I had decided that I wasn't going to suffer the crush on the tribunes at this late stage, so I separated from the rest of the Tourists and watched the start of the race from down at the Ford Chicane, as Pierre and I had done last year.

I suppose it was inevitable that my first picture of a car in 1999 had to be of a Toyota GT One. This is the 3 car of Ukyo Katayama, Keiichi Tsuchiya and Toshio Suzuki, which Katayama had qualified 8th.   The 15 BMW V12 LMR was crewed by Joachim Winkelhock, Pierluigi Martini and Yannick Dalmas. Martini set the qualifying time of 3:33.931, good enough for 6th on the grid.

Emanuele Pirro is driving the Audi R8R he shared with Frank Biela and Didier Theys. Biela qualified the car 11th.    I still think Audi should have stuck with the coupe and not the roadster! The 9 car was driven by Stefan Johansson, Stephane Ortelli and Christian Abt. Ortelli qualified it way down in 23rd.

After an hour or so of watching the race from the Ford Chicane, I made my way across to the Village, intending to watch for a while from the top of the Welcome building, but the place was packed and I gave it up as a bad job!  I met up with the rest of the Tourists at the champagne stall at about 6.30 and we left the circuit about an hour later for the drive back to Le Grand Lucé for dinner.

It was just before we took dinner that we learned of Peter Dumbreck's Mercedes accident.  Of course, details were very sketchy as we could barely pick up Radio Le Mans from there, so we had no idea how Dumbreck was.  Knowing that the car had flown off the track into the trees though, we were all pretty pessimistic about his chances.  As you can imagine, like everyone else, I guess, we were delighted when we found out that he had virtually walked away from the accident - a very lucky boy indeed!

In the middle of our meal, the heavens opened and the rain came down in torrents.  I was pretty concerned about what might have been happening during the rain at the circuit and what I was going to face as I walked the spectator areas during the night!

We made our way back via the Mulsanne restaurants.  On our arrival in the car park there I was amazed to find the grass bone dry and no sign at all of the torrential rain we had encountered only half an hour's drive away.  Damn good news!

We all then headed back to the garage rouge and at about 1 am, I guess, Ian and the rest left the circuit to go back to the hotel, leaving just Pierre and I to enjoy the best part of the race.

The fairground through the trees at the Esses.

At about 3 am we heard the news that the Boutsen Toyota had been taken off at the Dunlop Curve by the Estoril Porsche.  Bearing in mind that the sister Brundle car was already in loads of bother, our hopes of a Toyota win in 1999 were now looking pretty remote, with the BMWs running seemingly without problem at the front.

Pierre and I actually spent most of the night watching from around Tertre Rouge.  Of course, the race ran for quite a long time under the pace car after Boutsen's accident.  Unfortunately, Pierre was having quite a bit of trouble with a dodgy knee which meant that it really wasn't possible to wander around the circuit to the degree I normally would.  

Eventually as night turned to dawn and then daylight, we meandered back up to the Esses and then the Dunlop Chicane, before heading into the Village and pausing for breakfast at the Grand Marnier crepe stall, which was still going strong!

By 6 am, a number of notable retirements had taken place.  The two Toyotas, of course, one of the Audi R8C's, the Nissan R391, the DAMS Lola, the Ferrari 333SP and both of the Gache Riley & Scotts.  The remaining Toyota was being pedalled very hard by the three Japanese in chase of the BMW's (leading one to wonder why they hadn't pushed a bit harder earlier in the race?)  

The 15 BMW driven by Joachim Winkelhock. He had made his Le Mans debut last year in the BMW V12 LM98.        I think this is Tom Kristensen in the leading BMW V12 LMR, which he was sharing with J.J. Lehto and Jorg Muller.       This is Hiroki Katoh in the 19 BMW V12 LM98. This was in fact the No. 2 works car from last year. The transmission failed at 11.20 a.m.

After taking some revitalising coffee up at the Dunlop Chicane, Pierre and I headed out of the circuit to await the arrival of Ian, who was due to arrive to pick us up at 8.30.  We duly met up with him and Robert and made our way back to Le Grand Lucé for a spot of breakfast.

9 of the 12 1999 Tourists pose for yet another team picture in the car park at the back of the hotel at Le Grand Lucé.

After  eating and a quick wash and brush up it was time to get back into the cars for a trip out to Arnage and Indianapolis.  It was packed there and 2 of the 3 cars had to park in the overflow car park about 10 minutes walk away.

My last shot of the (then) leading 17 BMW. I believe this was taken on it's last completed lap. On the next lap the car went off in the Porsche Curves when a roll-bar link came loose and wedged the throttle open.

While we were at Arnage we heard of the demise of the leading BMW which had been 2 laps clear of its sister car.  With just 1 lap between that car and the remaining Toyota, we had a race on our hands again!  

My very last picture of the great Henri Pescarolo at Le Mans. He was sharing the 14 Courage C51 with Michel Ferte and Patrice Gay.   The 13 Courage was a C52 and was Nissan powered. The driving force was all-Italian, with Alex Caffi, Anfrea Montermini and Mimmo Schiatarella. They did extremely well to finish 6th.

After taking a spot of lunch at Arnage (omelettes for most, merguez for some!) and undertaking the annual task of working out who owed what to whom, it was time to make our way back to the garage rouge for the last few hours of the race.

Ian and Jim ponder the detail of the team finances while Mark looks on. (Either that or he's the referee!).

We needed to get away from the circuit swiftly after the race to get back to Le Havre to catch the 10.30 pm ferry back to Portsmouth.  So most of the Tourists hovered around the Dunlop Curve for the end of the race, ready for the dash to the cars just after 4 pm.

The race was won by the Winkelhock, Martini and Dalmas BMW, which managed to keep the all-Japanese Toyota at bay (helped by a puncture to the Toyota and some slightly dubious driving by the 18 privateer BMW!).  

Only two of the cars travelled back to Le Havre, as Jim (with Richard and Jeff) were instead catching the ferry at Cherbourg, as Ian hadn't been able to get all three cars on the boat back from Le Havre.

We stopped off at Honfleur to eat before finishing our journey to Le Havre, choosing the same restaurant where we had taken breakfast on the Friday morning.  

The last meal of our trip is taken once again at the Bar La Bisquine in Honfleur.

It wasn't long before we were back on the Pride of Portsmouth for the journey home.  I was completely flaked by this time, having not slept since my 4 or 5 hours sleep on the previous Friday night, so after picking up one or two bits and pieces in the duty-free shop (including my annual bottle of calvados!), I headed back to the cabin to get some sleep.  I gather the rest of the lads indulged in a few more beers and went to bed about 2 am.

Well that's just about it for Le Mans 1999.  We arrived back home at about 7 am, giving me time for another couple of hours sleep before driving back into town to get my films developed!

For once, this story actually contains quite a few pictures of the team members enjoying themselves.  If you visited my site expecting to see lots of photos of cars, my apologies.  I think its just as important, from the memory point of view, to see what the people themselves got up to!  I hope you agree.