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So Wednesday brought with it another
opportunity for a slow, leisurely rising from our pits. Incredible to think that
it was now Wednesday; I had arrived in Le Mans on Sunday and absolutely nothing
had happened on track yet! But I felt seriously relaxed and very content
with my lot, with the rumble of race engines now only a few hours away.
But Wednesday brought with it another
planned development, the arrival of the third member of our merry little band,
Tony. Tony was a friend of James's cousin and her husband and had also been to
Le Mans before, which was where he and James had met, although to be fair
neither of them knew each other all that well, so we were obviously hoping to
get on well together. We had thought that Tony would probably arrive later in
the day, according to his time estimates, so we were very pleased when his red
Rover pulled into the hotel car park at 10:30 am. Having got him quickly settled
into his room, we piled into James's car and set off for Arnage for coffee and
breakfast (well, I suppose it was brunch by then!), retracing our steps from
Tuesday morning, and taking coffee in the same bar and then buying baguettes to
eat down by the river.
Having had an extremely pleasant lunch in
Arnage we found ourselves dodging the continuing rain showers - the first of any
real substance for us so far - and then headed back to the hotel to get ready
for our first proper visit to the circuit for the four hour free practice
session starting at 4 pm. But before that, we made another quick stop at Auchan
to enable me to top up with water.
It would be fair to say that by now, after
what amounted to 3 full days in France without seeing a racing wheel turn in
anger yet, James and I were keen (as was Tony) to get our first glimpse of the
2010 Le Mans cars on the famous track, so we were quickly loaded up, all my
camera gear primed and ready and off to the circuit.
We arrived in the blanc car park at 2:40 pm,
James not taking up his allocated spot (no need to yet today). It was a great
place to park, literally 30 seconds from the entrance behind the tribunes, and
it really made me wonder why the Tourists always chose to park in the garage
rouge every year...?
We were soon through the ticket check-in and
onto the “tribunes” as I still call them for the first time.
Leaving James and Tony chatting, I
immediately took advantage of the completely free access to the grandstands
during practice and headed up to the back of the nearest one to shoot down into
the pit garages.
As the 4 pm start time came closer, we
bumped into local man and Ten Tenths member, Batmobile (real name Eric), his
brother and (I think) his nephew. We chatted for a while (as at that point we
couldn't get into the ACO grandstand) and I demonstrated my hopeless command of
French, making a rather rash promise to Eric that I would speak French to him
properly next year!
So as the Mansells discussed their car in
the pits opposite, the first cars emerged onto the track, trundling up to the
Dunlop chicane.
As the shot from where we were standing was
hopeless we moved up on the outside of the track to almost opposite the pit
exit, where I was able to shoot most of the cars as they emerged from the pits.
We watched from there for quite a long time
before we decided to move on around the outside of the circuit and on down
towards Tertre Rouge, since the recent re-profiling, one of my favourite parts
of the circuit to spectate from.
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