Aysedasi's Le Mans

When we got back to the hotel I didn't bother to shower as I'd originally intended - in fact for the first few minutes I just plugged a variety of camera and video batteries in to recharge - but it was truly wonderful to be able to take my shoes off for half an hour, wash my face and clean my teeth and most important of all, put on some warmer clothes as I'm sure that a fair part of my weariness was actually due to having become too cold. But there was no escaping the fact that we were in a hotel room on the outskirts of Le Mans while the race was going on, and that really wouldn't do! I sent a text to James at 7.05 saying just "enough sleep!" And we met outside in the car park - now in full daylight again - a few minutes later.

Before I went to Le Mans this year I started a thread on Ten Tenths based upon what I called "Goosebumps" moments - those experiences that stick in the memory and send the hairs on the back of your neck tingling when you think of them. And I had one of those moments in the couple of minutes that I stood outside in the hotel car park waiting for James; as I stood there it suddenly dawned on me that I could still hear the cars, the sound carrying over the few miles that lay between us and the Circuit de la Sarthe. I was almost mesmerised by it and it made the desire to get back to the circuit all the more powerful.

It was as James and I got back in the car and picked up the Radio Le Mans reception (which would just die as we reached the hotel - a bit like at Le Grand Lucé in the other direction), that we had a disappointing shock when we realised that the commentators were talking of the demise of the Montagny Peugeot which had been established in the lead for many hours. We were gutted to have missed the moment and I was even more exasperated with the realisation that Audi now had a 1-2-3... As so many others said at the time, no one would have predicted this in their wildest dreams this time yesterday.

If I remember correctly (it was a while ago now and I was pretty tired), only James and I returned to the circuit; Tony had an early morning start back for his ferry on Monday morning and he therefore elected to get a little more shuteye. We arrived back in garage blanc at 7.45 and in need of sustenance, so we made for the coffee and croissants at the ACO cafe at the back of T17, where I found myself really struggling to stay awake - not bad really, as it was the first time I'd done the "nodding dog" routine all week!

After our breakfast we left the bar and met up again with Tony when he returned to the circuit. Once again we found ourselves watching from the familiar spot at the bottom of the Dunlop Curve (as I still persist in calling it!), opposite the pit exit.

My photographs had really tailed off by this time, as they usually do. By now I'd been taking shots of the same 55 cars, as they gradually reduced of course, for some 19 hours, so the inclination to keep snapping had waned somewhat! It was at this time that I happened to mention that I hadn't had a Grand Marnier crepe yet this year and we all three decided that this was an oversight that simply had to be corrected without any further delay! So over we went to the Village where I bought our unusual mid-morning snack (well, to be entirely truthful, "snacks" plural, as one Grand Marnier crepe could never be enough!).

By 11 am, the #1 Peugeot had clawed back third place and with four hours to go was a lap behind the two leading Audis. The car was being driven flat-out (and I make no comment here about the Davidson/Corvette controversy), and it seemed as though we might still have a battle on our hands to the end of the race. I was glued to the Kangaroo TV, watching the lap times, willing the Peugeot to make some serious inroads into the two Audi's lead.  But it wasn't to be; at 12.51 or thereabouts, another Peugeot HDI engine went bang and Audi knew, with still more than two hours to go, that the trophy would be back in the cabinet at Ingolstadt once more. I have to say that while Audi deserved it - basically their cars ran faultlessly while the Peugeots didn't - it left me feeling decidedly (and probably unfairly) deflated as I separated from James and Tony to take up my place in T34 for the finish, having dropped the Kangaroo TV back to the stall on the way.

I took very few photos of the last hour and three quarters of the race, my humour taking its final knock with less than an hour and 20 minutes to go when the last remaining Peugeot of the Oreca Matmut team went the way of all Peugeots in 2010, to the despair of Hugues de Chaunac. What a complete and unmitigated disaster for the two French teams. I wonder what odds you would have got from your local Le Mans bookie on the Friday morning on all four Peugeots failing to finish? Enough to pay for next year's trip for sure!

So the time counted down and Audi won again. And that was about it really. It's not that I dislike Audi, no, not at all, or that I favoured Peugeot, I just wanted a good race to the flag, and we were robbed of that at every point; we were even deprived of the chance to see the Oreca Peugeot chase after the #7 Audi. Chasing for the win was a hopeless task of course, but it would have been good to see that Peugeot run at its ultimate pace while it tried to gain the third place on the podium.

I had no great desire to stay to watch the celebrations so I quit my seat moments after the Audi "train" crossed the line and I was standing beside James' car in the garage blanc at five past three...

James and Tony soon arrived to join me and both set off back to the hotel, James cleverly avoiding the heavy traffic by taking his Arnage detour again, a cunning plan which saw us back at base by 4 pm.