Le Mans 2007
The Tourists' Story
Saturday - Getting Ready for the Off
(or, Who Nicked the Drivers Parade?)
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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