|
I slept well
on Tuesday night in those familiar surroundings, not waking until just before 8
am. In fact, I'd only been awake for about two minutes when Jayne phoned
and I was trying to wake up properly as we spoke! After a refreshing
shower and a cafetiere of coffee (I'd brought the real stuff with me this
year!), it was out in more glorious sunshine and having wrested James from his
'pit', we headed off to the Bar Havane for yet more coffee.... James was
still feeling a little under the weather tum-wise, but after a relaxed hour we
returned to the hotel to meet Tony and his son Tim from their journey down after
their overnight crossing.
After they'd
found their rooms and stowed their gear, it was at last time to set off
to the circuit for the first time in 2011. Today we had the first
four-hour free practice session starting at 4 pm to look forward to, followed by
the first of the three qualifying sessions proper, from 10 pm to midnight.
When we arrived in the Garage Blanc we were puzzled by our parking tickets which
were for row 22 - but as far as we could see, the rows only went up to 21!
It didn't matter today, as we could park anywhere we liked but all we could see
was a small amount of space alongside the fence (which itself was alongside row
21) and we just assumed that somehow we were going to have to squeeze in there.
This gave rise to concerns about getting the cars out of there during race night when
we wanted to head off to Arnage and Mulsanne. We guessed that all
would be revealed later.....
We were soon
into the circuit, through the new electronic turnstiles - no more hand-held
'zappers' - and walked along the front of the tribune. We decided to watch
the start of the first session from the Dunlop grandstand overlooking the
chicane first installed in 1987. Of course that's the
beauty of the practice sessions at Le Mans, grandstand choice and seating is
completely free. So we gradually meandered our way around to the stand
before settling down for the first action of the 2011 24 Heures du Mans.
After the
issues I'd had with my camera on the way down, I was keen to try it out, somehow
optimistically hoping that the problem would have simply disappeared. To
my despair, I began to suffer the same problems from the very first shots.
I still wasn't what was causing the problem, but I was fairly convinced it was
the lens and not the camera, as the problem disappeared if I used my short zoom
lens. Unfortunately though, that lens was no real use from the stands or
spectator areas. It was seriously frustrating, as was the prospect of
having to put up with it for the whole of the rest of the week. And the
annoying thing is that it should never have happened - I could have purchased
another lens - even if for £30-40 over my original budget, which I believe would
have solved the problem. Having switched the camera on and off countless
times, changed cards, batteries and anything else I could think of, the problem
remained, sometimes intermittent, sometimes constant. I eventually twigged
that for some unknown reason, the shutter issue was only manifesting itself when
I zoomed over 170 on the old 100-300 lens. If I stayed at that point,
everything seemed OK. The solution wasn't particularly palatable, but at
least I could take pictures with a degree of zoom, in the knowledge that there
was likely to be a fair bit of cropping and enlarging to be done later.....
(or not as the case may be - Ayse - February 2012!).
We break off
here for a Peugeot moment on the motorwind......
And normal service was
resumed..... Although in the early part of the session, quite a few
drivers were clearly testing how hard they could push here in front of us!
It was a good
vantage-point though - we'd managed to find four seats quite near the top of the
stand. I had sat here briefly during the night in 2007, the only other
occasion having been way back in 1990. I would have enjoyed it more had I
been able to rely on my camera, but it was good, nonetheless.
We stayed
there for an hour an a half before leaving the stand and wandering down towards
the Esses, fortified by a bag of churros on the way!
|
