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The day before the race has always been a special
day for me. For most of my early trips to Le Mans, Friday was actually the
day I left home to travel to France and for a number of years I didn't get to
the circuit until Saturday lunchtime. In 1999 (my 14th trip), the Tourists
brought the start forward to Thursday, so for the fist time, we arrived at the
circuit a day earlier, in time to catch some of the pits walkabout. That
became a feature most years thereafter, so Friday was special from that point of
view. Of course, since I started travelling with James in 2010, I've
been in the wonderfully luxurious position of having already been at Le Mans for several
days by the time Friday rolls around....
But the special nature of Friday at Le Mans, in
what has become almost a tradition for those who are members of the Ten Tenths
forum, began in 2008, when James organised the first Ten Tenths Pit Visit - to
Embassy Racing. In 2009, we were guests of Speedy Team Sebah, while 2010
was the turn of Drayson Racing. In 2011 James pulled off a real coup by
arranging for us to be guests of Audi while in 2012 he matched that by organising a trip to Toyota. In 2013 however,
James willingly relinquished the organiser's hat to Le Mans resident Eric Vaillant ('Batmobile' on Ten Tenths), who had been working long and hard on a
visit to Oak Racing, a local team, one of the strongest in the LMP2 category.
But, once again, I get ahead of myself.....
After the late night the night before, I didn't
wake up until about 8.30, not feeling particularly bright. But the three
of us were up and off to the circuit at 9.45, deciding not to make the breakfast
visit to the Bar Havane.
We parked up in the garage blanc and headed
straight across to the back of the paddock to make our way in to the pitlane.
We had to get in their early, as today, there was to be a second (or actually, a
first) pit visit, to Greaves Motorsport, generously organised by
John Brooks. As soon as we neared the Greaves pits, we started bumping
into Tenthers.... My memory has faded severely as I write this part of the
story, some five months after the event, however John had kindly made the offer
of a visit some weeks beforehand and notwithstanding some practice issues for
the team, he was able to deliver the goods. Ironically therefore, having
been able to sit back and leave Eric to organise the 'official' Tenths pit
visit, James nevertheless found himself organising people for another one!
My note made at the time suggests that the following were able to visit Greaves
- Alex, Rene, wewantourdarbyback, Natalie, Beetle, Eps, Guy, Muppet, Kpr,
Dominique and Tony. A mix of real names and forum names there....
It had been a good opportunity to offer places on
a visit to some of those who had missed out on the allocation of places to Oak
Racing in the afternoon and by all accounts, it had turned out to be an
excellent visit, with John acting as a very effective 'tour guide'.
Those who went on the visits (in twos and threes) were universally pleased that they had the chance
to go. So a big thanks on behalf of Ten Tenths to Greaves Motorsport and
John Brooks for offering and organising the visit.
My memory is a bit of a blur after this but I do
recall taking lunch in the paddock behind the pits - yes, another baguette! -
before we started to assemble at the entry to the main paddock ready for the
visit to Oak Racing. Unfortunately for me, I was nursing quite a migraine
by this time. There were to be two visits, one at 1.45 and the other at
2.10. On the first visit were Vincent, Mike E, Victor, Simon, Bernard,
Remco, Simmi, Tim, Gingers and Water, while the second visit would comprise
Chris, Eric, Stéphane, James, Dani, Mathias, Ian, Nobby, Pascal, Dominique, Tony
and myself.
It was an interesting visit, not perhaps with the
same technical depth as some of the others we had been on, but very enjoyable
nonetheless. Everyone was grateful to Oak Racing for hosting us and of
course to Eric for putting a lot of work in to organising it.
We eventually left the circuit and arrived back at
the hotel at about 15.40, giving us a good chance to have a rest (and for me to
try and get shot of my migraine) before going out for our evening meal.
You will remember that we had intended to eat last
year at a regular haunt of the Tourists, Le Belinois, only to find that it had
'morphed' in Le Monciacum, primarily a pizza restaurant. But we decided to
go back again with our friend Paul Truswell from Radio Le Mans. When we
got there, Paul's bright red Audi was sitting in the car park already and we
were soon in and getting ready to eat. It would be too much to expect Le
Monciacum to live up to the culinary delights that Le Belinois used to deliver,
but we had a decent meal and more importantly had the chance to have a good old
chinwag with Paul about the events of the week so far and what the weekend would
bring. Great fun. (And no peeing dogs, either!).
After our meal it was back to the hotel to get our
heads do0wn for the most important night's sleep of the year, our last sleep
until Sunday evening......
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