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Le Mans 2009 - The Tourists' Story - Page 10

Morning has Broken....

 

When I reached the Ford Chicane, I wondered why it had been so long since I last watched from there!  I was in place by 6.30 and found myself able to get right close up to the fencing and literally shoot through it by poking the end of my lens through the fencing gaps.  By this time the sun was well up and beginning to shine brightly on the seats in the ACO grandstand. 

                   

              

                   

                   

                   

                   

         

At 6.45 I moved on from the Ford Chicane, having briefly (very briefly mind!) flirted with the idea of heading on to the Porsche Curves, until I realised how far it would be to walk....  So instead I headed onto the tribunes to lie in wait for pitstops!  For the next half an hour or so I walked up and down the front of the tribunes waiting for teams to make pit stops and then snapping them as best I could through the debris fencing in the still weak morning light.

Lola Aston Martin #007 Pitstop - 6.57 am - Driver change - Tomas Enge for Stefan Mücke

         

         

Lola Aston Martin #009 Pitstop - 7.08 am - Driver change - Peter Kox for Harold Primat

              

         

Navi Team Goh Porsche #5 Pitstop - 7.20 am -Driver change - Seiji Ara for Keisuke Kunimoto

              

Speedy Racing Team Sebah Pitstops

Lola #33 - 6.52 am - No driver change

                   

              

Lola #13 - 7.01 am - Driver change - Neel Jani for Andrea Belicchi

         

    

Corvette #63 - 7.14 am - No driver change

    

Team Essex Porsche #31 - 6.58 am - No driver change (Elgaard at wheel)

My final vantage point of the session was at the end of the tribunes where the cars make the right turn into the first part of the Dunlop Chicane.  Pretty much where Ian, Jeremy, Phil and I had come back into the circuit back at midnight. 

                   

         

                   

It turned out to be a surprisingly good spot and looking at the results I wish now that I'd spent more time there, but as it was by now about 7.30 and I needed to be back on the inside of the circuit at the chicane to meet Ian in half an hour, I finally put the camera away for the 'night' and made my now extremely weary way down through the underpass before settling down on a wooden bench outside the long-deserted Guinness Bar.  I mulled over the fact that I would have to wait another whole year before I would be able to do this again....  Ian was bang on time as always and we indulged in a coffee before we left to go back to Le Grand Lucé - but even the early morning coffee has changed these days - everything now comes out of a machine....!