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When I asked Brian Sheehan at
1st Tickets
to get me a seat in T34, I asked for an end of row, and I was delighted with the
seat that I got. It was actually quite close to the seats I had sat in the
previous four years, affording an excellent view of the start/finish straight
and all of the pre-race activities.
 
As I prepared my camera for what was in store, I
started to wonder when the driver's parade was going to start. When the
ceremony of the unveiling of the national flags and the playing of the national
anthems began far away to the right of the start/finish straight I was puzzled, as I knew from many year's
(well, 21 years in fact!) experience that this part of the pre-race ceremony had
always followed the parade of drivers, and not long before the drivers enter
their the cars for the start of the official race starting procedure. It seemed
that I'd either missed the driver's parade completely, or the ACO had decided
to give it a miss this year. It soon became obvious that it was the latter. I
can only assume that because of the earlier start of the race this year, 3 p.m.
instead of 4 p.m., and the fact that the weather was expected to deteriorate,
the ACO had decided not to hold the parade, perhaps on the wishes of the drivers
who didn't want to get wet again after the parade in Le Mans town the night
before!
So I settled down to watch the remainder of the
truncated pre-race ceremonies as the grandstands rapidly filled ready for the
start, and "filled" was the right word to use, as it seemed that a lot of people
who clearly didn't have tickets had found their way into the grandstand as they
were constantly having to move when other people arrived to take up their
rightful seats. I wondered if the marshals at the entrances to the
grandstand had been as diligent as they normally are in checking tickets.... By the time
the race was about to start, there were a lot of people sitting in the aisles,
actually making it quite difficult for those with legitimate seats to see.
Hopefully, the ACO will not allow this to happen again next year.
Anyway, this page has a selection of shots taken
before the start of the race.
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