Aysedasi's Le Mans

Le Mans 2012 - Ayse's Story

Page 10 - Thursday

Group C Qualifying and Back to Audi....

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.