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If I'm quite
honest, the rest of Sunday up to mid-afternoon is a bit of a blur. If I
remember rightly, Tony and Tim remained at the hotel for a while while Tony
recovered. I'm sure James and I must have grabbed some lunch somewhere,
but that memory is lost to the mists of time.
Going back
for a moment to the Saturday morning, Martyn Prowell had sent me a text at about
10.45 to say the Tourists had arrived at Le Mans. I wasn't able to make
contact with them at the time as I initially missed his text nor could I make
another suggested
rendezvous at the champagne stall due to the Ten Tenths meeting. It was
while James and I were briefly back at the hotel on Sunday morning that Martyn
called again to suggest a meeting later in the morning. We finally agreed
to meet close to the ACO's Espace Club. Having returned to the circuit,
although I was feeling absolutely dead tired, I left James to take up his seat
in the grandstand, while I walked for 25 minutes or so up towards the Dunlop
Bridge. Once there (and exhausted!), I waited for Martyn, and after exchanging a couple of
texts, he eventually appeared from where I had just walked. The rest of
the Tourists were all gathered overlooking the Dunlop Chicane, Ian, Martyn,
Alan, Nick, Jim and Clive.
It was great to see them all again - no Le Mans newbies this year
- and I gathered that they'd had an excellent time which had included a trip to
Vendôme - one of my favourite spots from past Le
Mans trips. Once again I had a moment of envy when they talked of their
return that evening to Cancale!
It's a fact of course that my separation from the Tourists is now effectively
complete, having experienced the intense pleasure of the full week at Le Mans for the
last 2 years there can be no going back, however I still look back with
tremendous satisfaction and not a little fondness upon my incredible 24 years as a Tourist!
Having said my farewells to Ian, Martyn and the others, I made my
now very weary way back to the grandstand where I met James as well as Tony and
Tim. Tony was still some way from recovered, but looked a little
better than he had a few hours earlier at Mulsanne Corner! The grandstand
was starting to fill up quickly in anticipation of the end of the race. As
so often happens on Sunday afternoons at Le Mans, I'd tired of the camera
viewfinder being permanently affixed to my face so there are only limited shots
from here on in.
It seemed quite a strange finish to the race to me - it held out
incredible promise but then rather fizzled out - a bit like the light drizzling
rain which fell intermittently for the last hour or so. The gap between
the leading #2 Audi and the chasing #9 Peugeot - the only Peugeot now in
contention for the race win - was still tantalisingly small, just a few seconds,
but I never once felt that the Peugeot would actually challenge for the lead
again. Even when the Audi stopped very late on for a (rather brave) full service,
reducing the gap to just 5-6 seconds, it immediately pulled away again and
finished the race a relatively comfortable 14 seconds ahead, Lotterer capping a superb Le Mans with a brilliant final stint.
Maybe if we had had more of that 'thing' that I always pray not
to have at Le Mans - a good downpour in the last hour - it might have been
different, but I still suspect that Audi would have had that covered as well.
Mind you, this had been one hell of a race. Anyone who
chose 2011 to come to Le Mans for the first time was incredibly lucky. This was the
closest race I'd seen in 26 years and after the nightmarish shunts to MoNish and
Rockenfeller, this win showed better than ever the strength and determination of
everyone at Audi. Despite having the strength of numbers, Peugeot always seemed
to be on the back foot, chasing that single Audi, and they seemed to run
out of puff at the very moment that a 110% effort was needed. This was a very
well deserved win for Audi, which left Peugeot having to think again just how
they can beat them in 2012*.
So we saw all the cars over the finishing line and then decided
to take our leave of the circuit for the last time in 2011 at about 3.15.
Even though we were back to the cars very quickly, the jam getting out of the
garage blanc was horrendous - much worse than last year. After shenanigans with one French family
pretending they were car park marshals to 'shepherd' their own car out, we
finally got onto the open road after an hour or so and were back at the hotel by
about 5.30.
We had planned to take our dinner at Le Belinois at Moncé-en-Belin
with Paul Truswell of Radio Le Mans joining us but he was absolutely flaked after his mammoth
commentary stint and had to cry off. With that and Tony's delicate
stomach to think about, James and I decided to abandon the rich offerings of my favourite
restaurant in favour of another visit to the 'Hippo Grill' with Julie and Andy
for company again.
Once more James and I tucked into the irresistible foie
gras, our fourth of the week, before various bits of red meat were also
delivered to the table. We were back to the hotel relatively quickly after
the meal, as the need for sleep had by now become all-important!
*Post-Race Note: Or not,
sadly......
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