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When I reached
the Ford Chicane, I wondered why it had been so long since I last watched from
there! I was in place by 6.30 and found myself able to get right close up
to the fencing and literally shoot through it by poking the end of my lens
through the fencing gaps. By this time the sun was well up and beginning
to shine brightly on the seats in the ACO grandstand.
At 6.45 I moved on from the Ford Chicane, having
briefly (very briefly mind!) flirted with the idea of heading on to the Porsche
Curves, until I realised how far it would be to walk.... So instead I headed
onto the tribunes to lie in wait for pitstops! For the next half an hour
or so I walked up and down the front of the tribunes waiting for teams to make
pit stops and then snapping them as best I could through the debris fencing in
the still weak morning light.
Lola Aston Martin #007 Pitstop - 6.57 am - Driver change - Tomas Enge for Stefan
Mücke
Lola Aston Martin #009 Pitstop - 7.08 am - Driver
change - Peter Kox for Harold Primat
Navi Team Goh Porsche #5 Pitstop - 7.20 am -Driver
change - Seiji Ara for Keisuke Kunimoto
Speedy Racing Team Sebah Pitstops
Lola #33 - 6.52 am - No driver change
Lola #13 - 7.01 am - Driver change - Neel Jani for
Andrea Belicchi
Corvette #63 - 7.14 am - No driver change
Team Essex Porsche #31 - 6.58 am - No driver
change (Elgaard at wheel)
My final vantage point of the session was at the end of the
tribunes where the cars make the right turn into the first part of the Dunlop
Chicane. Pretty much where Ian, Jeremy, Phil and I had come back into the
circuit back at midnight.
It turned out to be a surprisingly good spot and
looking at the results I wish now that I'd spent more time there, but as it was
by now about 7.30 and I needed to be back on the inside of the circuit at the
chicane to meet Ian in half an hour, I finally put the camera away for the
'night' and made my now extremely weary way down through the underpass before
settling down on a wooden bench outside the long-deserted Guinness Bar. I
mulled over the fact that I would have to wait another whole year before I would
be able to do this again.... Ian was bang on time as always and we indulged in
a coffee before we left to go back to Le Grand Lucé - but even the early morning
coffee has changed these days - everything now comes out of a machine....!
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