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By now, the
time was ticking away with just a few minutes to go to the start of the second
qualifying session and James, Tony, Tim and I quickly made our way to the Maison
Blanche grandstand from where we had decided to watch the session. There
seemed to be a lot of people at the circuit by now. It's always difficult
to judge these things but in my view there seemed to be more people at the
circuit at this time last year than when we arrived at the same grandstand last
year. The stand was virtually full but we were lucky enough to find some
seats in the front row.
There was an
extra appetiser this year. 20 years after it's victory in 1991, the iconic
Renown/Charge Mazda 787B was going to do a demonstration run, some might say
bizarrely in the hands of actor and occasional race driver, Patrick Dempsey.
Well, he did a couple of laps. And that's about as positive as I can be
about it. Fantastic to see it, but so disappointing to see it driven so
incredibly slowly! It was rumoured that Johnny Herbert - a race-winner in
that very car in 1991 - would demonstrate it again on Saturday, and if so we
could only hope that he would give it a bit more welllie!
After a while in that stand, we made our way
around to Dunlop. I can't be sure now, but I have a feeling that we took
Julie and Andrew into the ACO's Espace Club to sign them in. Once again,
rather poor offerings photo-wise from there - the fencing and marshalls and
media wandering around there make it really difficult to get any decent shots.
Occasionally you get lucky....
So after
that, it was down to business with the second qualifying session. As we
were sitting down so low in the grandstand, there was no real chance of taking
any decent photos as I couldn't get 'above' the debris fencing. We did
have a bag of churros though to keep our spirits up!
What else we
did for food that evening seems to have failed to register for me, but I do know
that we decided to watch the final qualifying session from the Durand stand,
where of course we would be for the start of the race on Saturday. Again,
my memory is failing a little, but I recall we had some strong coffee from the
ACO bar to keep us going before finding some seats - actually 5-6 rows up from
our actual seats for raceday.
The battle
for pole - and the front row - was really hotting up and although there was
always a feeling that Peugeot would come good and take it, somehow Audi always
seemed to have the upper hand, a feeling we'd not really experienced for a long
time with Peugeot very much in control for the last few years. But in the
end it was clear that Peugeot couldn't respond and in the end all eyes were on
the #3 Audi of Tom Kristensen as it made a last-ditch attempt on pole and a
1-2-3 for Audi, but a mistake for Tom meant a damaged car and a slightly
deflating end to qualifying (as well as a big crush of media in the Audi pit!).
The view was
very good from T17 and after watching the start of the race from the pits
grandstand (T34) every year since 2003, I was really looking forward to watching
the start from the either side of the circuit for a change.....
So, after the
end of the session it was time to head back again to the cars and then to the
sanctuary of our quiet but very comfortable rooms.....
It was well past 1 am by the time I got to bed and
with a long say in store tomorrow, I needed to get some shut-eye.....
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