14page14

After fighting our way through the crowd, we made our way back to the cars, not to go anywhere yet, but instead to put night gear on - for those who had brought any! I guess it was at this point (and at many other points as the night wore on) that I began to realise that I had made a big mistake, clothing-wise! It had been a fabulously warm and sunny week and the evenings, even very late on had been positively balmy. I had stood out at Mulsanne on Wednesday and Arnage on Thursday as qualifying finished in a t-shirt, actually still feeling pretty warm, so when I got up on Saturday morning and decided what to take with me, I simply thought the weather would be no different on Saturday night, How wrong I was.... Ironically I had brought to France a new insulated overcoat, perfect for both rain and cold, plus a thick heavyweight jumper. But where were they? In the wardrobe in my room back at the hotel. It just didn't occur to me that I would need them. So there I was, with just a light pullover and my trusty bodywarmer. Fortunately, I had packed my thermal long-johns which I would normally have put on when we got out to Arnage, but I decided to put them on straight away in the garage blanc. I looked on pretty enviously as the others donned fleeces and nice warm coats.... Having learned my lesson (or so I thought) back in 2011, I had gone and forgotten it again....

So I just had to make the best of it. We made our way back to T17 but as we only had three tickets, Tony, Allon and I took up residence there for a while while James and Nane wandered off to watch elsewhere.

Videos 45-

I suppose we stayed there watching for an hour or so and the more astute observers will see that I took only a few shots from here before we rejoined James and Nane back at the cars for our usual trip out to Arnage, a little earlier than usual.