Aysedasi's Le Mans

Le Mans 2008

The Tourists' Story

Embassy Racing

As Alan and I moved along the pitlane, with our pit visit in mind, naturally enough we started to gravitate towards the Embassy Racing pit. The drivers from the Embassy Zytek, Warren Hughes, Jonny Kane and Joey Foster were at a table signing autographs. As it happens, aside from a couple of other individual drivers, this was the only team we saw during our walk down the pitlane that had made the effort to make it's drivers accessible to the public. As I was to learn later, this was just another example of the refreshing approach the Embassy team have towards their fans, particularly the British fans.

The time was fast moving and our pit visit was fast approaching. Before long, Allon and I were approached by the familiar faces of some of the members of the Ten-Tenths forum, including Batmobile, GT6, Dominique, Bernard B, and Bentley 03 himself.

There were so many that it was clear we had gained quite a few speculative 'temporary' Ten Tenths members (!) who thought they might as well join us in search of the Le Mans 'free lunch' that was a visit to one of the pits! In fact there were so many interlopers that the visit had to be divided into two sections, which was a bit galling when it became obvious that the freeloaders had managed to get themselves on the first half of the visit!

Our visit was conducted by refueller Andy Holt, who understandably spent a little time explaining to us the intricacies of the refuelling system.

It was quite tricky for all of us in the confined area of the pit as we didn't want to get in the way of the guys who were working feverishly on getting the car ready for tomorrow's race. Even more so as the team had been stationed in the newer extra garages – rather unfortunately christened the ‘row of woe’ by the Radio Le Mans team! Eventually, after 15 minutes or so, we found our way at the back of the pit in the area where tyres were being prepared.

Although the pit tour was relatively brief and limited by the fact that we needed to keep leaping out of the way of mechanics coming and going doing their essential work, we were all very grateful to the team for allowing us such a great opportunity. Hopefully we may be able to have a similar chance next year?

Time was pressing on pretty rapidly now and as Allon and I had not managed to get on the first part of the tour, we needed to leave in order to meet up with the rest of the Tourists in the garage rouge at 4 o'clock. So we were actually able to save quite a bit of time by leaving the Embassy pit by the back door, so to speak. This took us straight out to the back of the paddock avoiding the need to walk all the way back down the pitlane and back up again at the back of the grandstand. It also meant that we walked straight out to where one or two of the cars taking part in the Group C race on Saturday morning were paddocked.

It was now 3:30 p.m. and we set off back towards the garage rouge, however our progress was interrupted again when we found the main paddock for the Group C cars. We just had to spend a few minutes there admiring some very beautiful cars indeed, before we realised we needed to press on to meet the others. Unfortunately at this point there just wasn't enough time to stop and take as many shots as I would have liked!

We finally met up with the rest of the Tourists, having received a reminder call from Martyn that the time was pressing on. As it happened, we were by no means that last to arrive in the garage rouge.