Aysedasi's Le Mans

Le Mans 2012 - Ayse's Story

Page 6 - Wednesday

To the Circuit to Check out Audi's Hotel....!

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.