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There are always parts of days in every Le Mans
trip when you realise after the event that you remember very little of a
sizeable chunk of the day - and Thursday was one of those days! I know we
were up and about a little later than usual as, after a late night and with
nothing going on at the circuit until 4 pm when the Group C's were due to
practice, there was no need to be up at the crack of dawn! When we did
finally rise and shine, we headed up to the bar for breakfast - I know that
because we always do that! Do I actually remember it? No, I confess
I don't....
It would be reasonable to suppose that we later
went and got some lunch somewhere, but again, my memory fails me. I think
we did get to the circuit reasonably early though as I recall doing the rounds
of the shops in the 'mall' at the rear of the grandstands, but beyond that, my
memory is for once - a complete blank!
And so on to what I do remember.....
We talked about where to watch the Group C practice from and as the view from
what I still call the 'Maison Blanche' grandstand (now called the 'La Sarthe'
grandstand, no doubt for some politically correct reason), has always been a
good one, we decided to watch the session from there. It also gave us the
chance to check out the new location of the Radio Le Mans studio, almost
directly opposite.
I absolutely loved the Group C days at Le Mans; my
introduction to Le Mans came at the beginning of the Porsche/Jaguar battles and
I look back at those times with great fondness. But having now seen the
Group Cs at Le Mans several times in recent years, I was beginning to struggle
to retain that enthusiasm on seeing the cars appear on the circuit yet again.
But this time I was pleasantly surprised. For starters, we had an
excellent view. We had managed to get quite high up in the stand, well
above the fencing, which made for reasonable photo-taking. More
importantly, there were some different cars out there at last, including two
Sauber-Mercedes, three glorious Lancias, plus a Nissan and a host of lovely
Porsche 962s. It was disappointing that there were no Jaguars this year,
but that thought soon drifted away as I realised that most of the cars were
being pedalled with a greater degree of gusto than normal - great fun!
It was while we were sitting there that I trained
my lens on the new Radio Le Mans commentary position overlooking the Ford
Chicane - or more accurately, the pit in-lane. We had learned from Paul
Truswell shortly before leaving for Le Mans that RLM had finally been ousted
from their commentary 'home' of so many years up near the top of the ACO
grandstand. We didn't appreciate until our meeting with Fabian from Audi
that it was indeed Audi themselves, such a long-time supporter of RLM who had
taken the area over. So the Radio Le Mans team found themselves relocated
to a two-storey structure on the inside of the circuit and I was even able to
spot Paul Truswell and John Hindhaugh looking out of their respective windows!
It did seem shame that the commentary would no
longer be coming from that incredible viewpoint high above the pits but at least
they could still see the cars and didn't have to rely on TV monitors to
commentate from!
The Group C qualifying session eventually wound
down to a finish at 5 o'clock and was followed by an hour of practice for the
cars in the Aston Martin Festival which - with apologies to those who felt
differently - we found really rather dull. Lovely cars of course, but far
too many being driven very gently indeed - or so it seemed to us.
We needed to sort out our vantage-point for the
next on-track action, which would be the second qualifying session for the Le
Mans cars, which was due to start at 7 pm, however before heading off, we needed
to make our way over to the Audi 'Fan' area once again, so that James could
'hand the reins' over to Chris (Kpy) who was leading tonight's group on their
visit to the Audi hospitality box in James' absence. The group soon
assembled, Chris was there, with Simon (GT6), his daughter Helen (Elaviel), Ian
(isynge) and his wife Margaret, Bernard and his friend Dominique, Tim the Grey
and his son, plus Matt (CTD), Neils (Nelis B), Nobby (Nobster) and one or two
others whose names I fear are lost to the mists of time!
Teresa soon appeared and was happy to accommodate
a couple of extras who had turned up in hope, but she brought with her the news
that due to pressures of time, the visit would have to be limited to about 45
minutes tonight. This was a bit of a shame for those on the second visit,
but by all accounts they did have a good time and they benefited not only from
another appearance by Emanuele Pirro, but also his long-time team mate, Marco
Werner. The third member of that famous trio, Frank Biela, was apparently
supposed to be there too, but James, Tony and I knew he wouldn't be as he was
walking down through the back of the pits in front of us as we made our way back
to the car.
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