Aysedasi's Le Mans

Le Mans 2011 - Ayse's Story - Page 7 - Thursday

Let's Do That Qualifying Thing Again!

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.....