Aysedasi's Le Mans

Le Mans 2010 - Ayse's Story - Page 6

Wednesday - And So Down to Business...

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.