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It was incredible to think that as we reached
Wednesday, the day that we would see our first on-track action, we'd already
spent four nights either in or on the way to France. But even more
incredible was the delightful fact that we still had another five nights left to
enjoy, including two nights of qualifying and the night of the race of course.
Prior to Le Mans, James had been putting his
organising skills to work and had somehow managed to secure a visit to the
Toyota pits during Friday's pits walkabout, and we assumed very happily that
this would be the full extent of the Tenthers involvement in with the teams for
Le Mans 2012. Wrong! Not long before we departed for France, Florian
Zitzlsperger of Audi (the man who set up our Audi pit visit in 2011) came on to
Ten Tenths to make an offer to members to make use of the hospitality area above
the pits during qualifying. This was a tremendous offer but the obvious
reality was that it needed to be organised and I think we all knew who was going
to end with that particular job.... Someone with the track record and
expertise to do it well! So James put his organising hat on again and
quickly set about assembling two teams of Tenthers to make the visits on
Wednesday and Thursday night.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.... The
major event on Wednesday morning was the arrival of Tony, the third member
of our little Le Mans band. After a typically leisurely start to the day,
James and I drove up to the bar for breakfast and it was there that we greeted
Tony's on his arrival in his recently acquired Alfa Brera - leaving Tony with a
new moniker of 'Brera Rabbit'! We James had obtained Tony's room key from
monsieur before he departed the hotel, so Tony was able to get into his room
straight away. We also had plenty of time in hand to let him have a bit of
a rest after he'd stowed his gear.
Meanwhile, back to Audi...... James had
liaised with Florian but as he wasn't arriving at Le Mans until Thursday, he had
delegated Fabien, a member of his staff to sort out our two visits. And
Fabien made it clear that he wanted to meet with James before the first of those
visits took place later that evening. So it was that the three of us took
a drive to the circuit - we were heading there for the free practice session
anyway - to pay a visit to Audi's 'hotel' which was situated in the Parc des
Expositions, generally more simply known as 'Expo'. James had to do a fair
bit of explaining to the young ladies marshaling the gate to the car park but
soon we were allowed in and parked up waiting for Fabien to make himself known
to us. He did so and gave us a tour of the Audi offices as well as
introducing us to Teresa, as it was she who would be handling the fine detail of
our visits. As I understood it, Florian (and thereby Audi) were
effectively her clients, and she was a hospitality specialist.
Teresa took everything in her stride, confirming that there would be no problem
with the few extra guests that we wanted to include. We arranged to meet
her again shortly before the qualifying session at 7 pm.
We had a small peek into the way that Audi go
about things just before we left the meeting. Fabien asked us if we would
like to have a look around the hotel. I think we were all taken aback by
what we were shown - 1000 rooms, yes 1000! Single (and some double)
prefabricated rooms with the bare essentials, a bed and a light, with loos and
showers nearby and a guest pack including an Audi dressing-gown! It was
quite astonishing, but there it was, all ready for the lucky Audi guests to use.
It was a perfect illustration of how Audi think and work - with nothing left to
chance; everything catered for and in the most efficient way possible.
We toyed with the idea of leaving the car in the
Expo car park but it was actually easier to go and park in the Garage Blanc, for
which we had tickets as usual - the same spots as last year. We entered
the circuit and decided to walk through the Village, just to do a quick recce of
the location for the Ten Tenths meeting on Saturday and on paying a visit to the
'Green GT', the 56th garage entry for Le Mans 2013, we bumped into Eric
(batmobile) and his brother Stéphane. It was actually getting pretty warm
by this time, the sun was out and the spectre of rain which had been hanging
over us all week seemed to have moved away, hopefully for the rest of the
afternoon and evening at least.
After taking our leave of our French friends we
decided it would be sensible to head on down to the ACO's Espace Club to get our
registrations out of the way. We actually thought of eating there, bearing
in mind that we'd eaten virtually nothing since breakfast but the available nosh
was disappointing and we decided to leave it for the time being (as we also did
Eric's gift of brioche for our breakfast the next morning!). So we moved on down
to the inside of the circuit past the Dunlop Bridge, overlooking the sweeping
bends from under the bridge down to the Esses and settled down ready for the
free practice session which started at 4 pm.
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