Le Mans 2004
The Tourists' Story
Despite a fairly late night, I was up and about at 7 a.m. and eating breakfast not long after at Le Cheval Blanc. The various Tourists also surfaced and as we were very keen to catch the Group C support race, we hit the road again before 9 o'clock.
In fact we walked into the circuit from the garage rouge just as the warm-up for the main event came to an end and in the pleasant morning sunshine we took a walk down to the Esses to watch the Group C race from there.
For me, the Group C race brought back an awful lot of terrific memories of my first few years at Le Mans in the mid to late 80's, particularly the sight of gorgeous Silk Cut Jaguars and even some of the lovely little C2 cars.
At the end of the Group C race, the Tourists headed back towards the tribunes, but it was time for me to leave them to it as I had a rather important meeting to attend!
I was a bit early for the Ten Tenths meeting and as I toured the shops in the Village I first bumped into the boys from Planet Le Mans, who kindly presented me with one of their hats and proceeded to take large numbers of photographs! Before long, I was reunited with my "Official French Correspondent" Monsieur Fab.
It wasn't long before the square in the Village was literally crowded with Ten Tenths members, including Francis, Pascal, Liz, Mags, Rob, Nordic, Ker, Gilles, Allon (and no doubt lots of others whose names now escape me as I write this far too long after the event!).
After enjoying the champagne, Fab and I took up our places in the pits grandstand - once again, I thank Fab for his wonderful friendship and generosity. So there I was again, soaking up the atmosphere in area 3, row 9, seat 42, watching the pre-race parade and festivities that I enjoy so much. If you go, yes, the race is what its all about, but the parade is essential viewing - make sure you don't miss it!
The weather was good, my spirits had already been raised by the delights of champagne on a Saturday lunchtime. What more could I want than to be sitting in the grandstand at Le Mans with 3 hours to go before the start of the world's greatest sporting event?
Well, perhaps some HT girls.......
It wasn't long before Fab and I were joined by Bernard. Bernard has his own excellent Le Mans site at http://www.ifrance.com/Brothier/
After you're finished here, pay him a visit - I have to admit that he gets his pictures up a lot quicker than me...... ;-)
Its surprising how quickly those two or three hours of pre-race preparation go and almost before you know it the cars are lined up ready for their green flag lap (if they still call it that?).
And as 4 p.m. French-time ticks inexorably round, its show-time once again!
Its surprising how quickly Le Mans settles down into a rhythm, with the fastest prototypes lapping the slowest of the GTs within just a handful of laps. Of course, down the field, there are plenty of battles, not only within the classes themselves, but also between the classes, as the drivers of the fastest and slowest cars in various categories soon find out.
After a couple of hours in the grandstand, Fab and I wandered down to the Dunlop Chicane where we witnessed (on screen) the dramas between the #8 and #2 Audis, which certainly livened up the early stages of the race.
Not long after the Audi crash, I said farewell to Fab as he made his way back to his swimming pool in Nantes (!), and made my own rendezvous with the Tourists - at the champagne stall, of course!
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