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The mood on
Sunday morning was particularly good. The Jaguars were still going well, and
Jaguar #3 had taken the lead during the night and was really seeing off the
challenge of Nissan and Porsche, although the Brun Repsol Porsche would remain a
nagging worry until shortly before the end of the race.
One of the
highlights of Le Mans 1990 was a visit to the spectator area above
the pits. The "new" pits, constructed after the terrible accident of 1955 were
by now showing their age. Always full of people who seemed to have no obvious
reason to be there, the pits were a recipe for disaster, with cars arriving and
departing every few seconds. The chances of a major accident in the pits,
especially one involving fire, were always considerable.
The pit balconies
were an extremely popular spectating place providing a wonderful view for those
lucky enough to get there! You were able to look down on the cars as they were
being worked on by the mechanics, and get another angle of the competing cars
thundering along the pits straight. In 1990, I finally managed to get up
onto the pits balcony. I can only assume that we managed to do so as a result
of having bought the grandstand seats, although to the best of my memory, all
four of us made it onto the balcony, despite having only three grandstand
seats! I'm afraid memory fails me as to exactly how we did it!
A bit like seeing the old
Dunlop Curve in 1986,
I'm really glad
that I had this opportunity in 1990, as in 1991 the entire pit complex was to be
bulldozed to make way for a far larger pits and grandstand complex, which would
provide a great deal more room for mechanics and team personnel to work on the
cars reducing the chances of an accident, as the pit lane would be far less
crowded than in previous years.
We were able to
spend quite a long time up on the pits balcony, not only taking photographs of
the cars, this time approaching from left to right along the pits straight, but
also of various activities going on down in the paddock below to the rear of the
balcony. We were able to watch the Toyota personnel drying out the drivers
race-suits, using hairdryers.....
After leaving the
balcony, we were able to get down into the paddock where we caught sight of the
two Mazdas which had earlier retired within one lap of each other (albeit at
different times).
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