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At the end of the session we headed back to the
car, having decided that it made sense to watch the third and final qualifying
session from Mulsanne Corner.
It was at this point that we became
'geographically challenged' as we found that the usual route to Mulsanne from
Arnage was blocked off by the local gendarmerie and we headed off for what
turned out to be a fairly extensive detour through the local Sarthe countryside
before eventually getting ourselves back on the right road to Mulsanne.
One to remember for next year if they inexplicably block the normal road again.... But despite the long trek from the car park to
Mulsanne Corner itself, we still managed to get into position before the cars
were released at 10 pm.
So this was it; at the end of Q1 on Wednesday, the
fastest Audi (#1) was in the mid 25's, about 1.7 seconds ahead of the ahead of
the fastest Toyota (#7). By the end of Q2 earlier this evening, Audi #3
had stretched that to over 2 seconds, so what could Toyota do?
There was some pretty hard trying going on and
although the #1 Audi finally set a time of 3m 23.787, the Toyotas got much
closer than most have predicted, the #8 example finishing just over a second shy
on 3m 24.842 and thereby splitting the Audis for a slot on the inside of the
second row.
Although I think many of us were hoping that
Toyota could pull out the ultimate surprise and land pole, the outcome was still
massively impressive, and although we had no real idea how all of this would
translate into race pace , it left us feeling far more optimistic that there was
a chance of a real race between the two main protagonists, after all.
As always, standing here in the dark generally
unable to use flash makes it difficult to get any kind of decent shot and I've
resisted the urge to do wholesale photoshopping here to try and make the photos
a little better. So, fairly naff shots, including some nicely
highlighted marshals and signs!, I'm afraid, but they do at least record the
moment!
A great evening - an hour of classic sportscars
and then four great hours of qualifying. It had stayed dry and not only
that, it was still reasonably warm too. We headed back to the hotel in the
knowledge that race-day was fast-approaching and who knows, just maybe there
would be a real race at the sharp end?
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