After what was inevitably a
fairly late night, I was in no rush at all to leap out of bed on Thursday
morning, staying in my 'pit' until 8.30 when I made myself a coffee and washed
the cobwebs away under the shower. I hadn't been up for very long before
the final member of our 2015 team arrived. Having survived the experience
last year, Allon had been quick to decide to throw his lot in with us again in
2015 and like last year, he had been able to hitch a lift with Sean (Tenther
claude2cv). They arrived at the hotel at 9.30 by which time Allon's room
was pretty much ready for him to move straight in.
After leaving him for a while
to stow his gear and take a shower we continued our normal morning routine with
breakfast up at the bar. The weather was very good so we were able to take
it out on the patio area at the back.
It was a very leisurely
breakfast as we had masses of time in hand and we didn't move off from there
until midday. We took another trip up to Auchan principally to enable
Allon to pick up the supplies he needed, although I did indulge in some cherries
and a bag of my favourite almond tuiles.
After returning to the hotel
to store our provisions, we prepared our kit for Thursday's qualifying sessions
at the circuit and left at around 1.30, arriving half an hour or so later in
Parking Blanc, with plenty of time before the first of the sessions started at 7
pm.
We did the rounds of the shops
behind the grandstands again so that Allon could seek out some purchases.
We also walked to the Village and visited the Toyota marquee where I was able to
drool over the Toyota TS020 - the GT-One - my all-time favourite Le Mans car and
then view the Ford and Ferrari exhibition. Having done that, Allon and I made
our way down to the Espace Club to get Allon signed in as an ACO guest.
Once that was done the two of
us made our way back to the grandstands to find the others in Durand (T17) from
where we watched the practice for the Legends support race. We were pretty
comfortable here and decided that we might as well watch the second qualifying
session from here too.
I took very few photographs
during the session (which saw no dramatic changes up at the front of LMP1) was
halted early after Jan Magnussen's big shunt in the Corvette and we decided to
move on at that point to make our way to Mulsanne Corner to watch the final
qualifying session from there.
