Le Mans 2012 - Ayse's Story
Page 12 - Thursday
Third Qualifying - Mulsanne - I'm Sure It's Around Here Somewhere....
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?
Index
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
