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As (any) regular readers will know, I've been making a longer
trip to Le Mans since 2010 and I'm honest enough to admit that it has become
quite a challenge for me to remember with any degree of clarity what we did on
any given day and certainly at any particular time, which makes writing up my
story that little bit more difficult. Before these longer trips, over the
course of a long weekend from Friday to Monday, recalling events wasn't too much
of a problem, but a trip which now extends to 9-10 days does create issues for
someone like me who likes to go into detail for the sake of posterity after the
event! In years past I've taken notebooks - but then I've forgetten to write
anything much in them! Last year I put a diary app on my mobile and even
though I made something like 80 entries in it during that trip, I still resolved
to record more this year. Well, the simple fact is that I failed
miserably, making only 40-odd entries into the diary. The teacher's
admonishment after Le Mans 2014 therefore has to be 'must try harder' in
2015 - a phrase all too familiar from my schooldays......
The upshot of this is that there are several 'lost' periods where
my memory fails me and I have no useful notes to assist. Tuesday morning
is definitely one of those periods....
What I do recall is that I had a pretty broken sleep after 'whatsapping'
with Jayne around 2 am, but then, unusually, I slept on until the very late hour
(for me) of 8.45. James and Nane were both up by this time and we met
outside an hour or so later for our first run up the road for breakfast at the
Bar Havane where Madame professed to have no recollection at all of seeing (and
acknowledging) us at Auchan the day before. Wonderful strong coffee was
consumed along with a selection of croissanty goodies.
As Nane had been
unwell in the morning yesterday she had missed out on our Auchan trip and James
took her shopping for the bits and pieces she needed. On this occasion
(the only one, I think) I passed up the chance of another shopping opportunity
and instead stayed at the hotel, initially sitting outside enjoying the warm
sunshine while my room was refettled.
Tuesday was of course an important day as we would be welcoming
the arrival to the team of Tony, who had decided to avoid the normal rush on
Wednesday by travelling over a day earlier than usual. Tony's ferry was
due in at Caen at 3 pm, giving him an a likely ETA of between 5 and 6 pm.
As usual we had no real plans for Tuesday, our traditional 'rest
day' however while we were at scrutineering we'd bumped into John Brookes, the
Press Officer for the Greaves Motorsport team and he had kindly invited us to
lunch at the Smoking Dog restaurant in the paddock today. Regular
listeners to Radio Le Mans (and those who have taken a wander around the paddock
in recent years) will be familiar with Smoking Dog, where many of the teams as
well as the RLM crew are fed and watered during the Le Mans week.
James and Nane returned from Auchan after a successful shipping
trip and we made plans to head into the circuit at 12.15. On our arrival
in the road behind the grandstands we discovered that the garage blanc was
closed and so we had to park much further up the road in the corner of the
garage bleu instead. We walked back along the outside of the circuit
alongside the run to the Ford Chicane. The area was as eerily deserted as
it had been at around this time last year. We made our way briefly up onto
the tribunes so that Nane could have her first look at the them and the pit area
before heading down through the underpass into the paddock.
From there it was only a short walk to Smoking Dog and John was
already there. We were introduced to Daniele, the son of the proprietor
Carlo. Daniele was running front of house and made us very welcome.
We enjoyed an excellent meal with John and had a chat with a pleasant American
couple, over for the race.
In addition to our lunch, John had also invited us to join him
for the media event he was hosting for Greaves (and Nissan) later than afternoon
which we readily accepted. But we had a little time to kill and as the
paddock wasn't subject to any obvious security this early in the week, we took
the chance to wander through it, seeing the team personnel scampering here and
there doing their preparation for the on-track action which would start
tomorrow. I spotted Bart Hayden, the Rebellion team boss and James was
able to have a short chat with him before he had to dash off. It was a
really pleasant way to spend a relaxed hour in the sunshine which, as it had
been since we arrived in France, was literally 'wall to wall'.
By now it was time to make our way up to the Nissan area in the
paddock where we joined John and various members of the media, there to meet the
drivers of the #41 and #42 Greaves Motorsport cars. There was considerable
media interest in the drivers of the #42 Caterham liveried car as Matt McMurry,
the son of former Le Mans competitor Chris McMurry, who had only turned 16 years
old in November 2013 was aiming to break the record (which had stood since the
'50s) for the youngest driver to take part in the 24 Hours - and in due course,
the youngest finisher! Although I took a few photographs, I actually spent
most of my time chatting to his team-mate, Tom Kimber-Smith, himself a double Le
Mans class winner in GT2 in 2006 and LMP2 in 2011. With the focus on
McMurry and the other young Greaves driver, Allesandro Latif, Tom was left
twiddling his thumbs so James and I went over and had an interesting chat with
Tom.
It was very entertaining and just that bit different from the
norm but it was also incredibly warm in there and at around 4.30 pm we thanked
John for the invitation and said our goodbyes. There was nothing much to
keep us at the circuit now so we left and retraced our steps from earlier in the
afternoon back to the car in the garage bleu. Bearing in mind that we were
close to the Porsche Curves and therefore the public road part of the circuit,
the urge to drive it again became irresistible, although unusually (possibly for
the first time for me), we drove the circuit in reverse, parking up briefly on
the grass alongside the armco about 300 meters from the Indianapolis
right-hander where more photographs simply had to be taken! If nothing
else, we needed to record the last time we would see all that grass there before
most of it gets removed prior to next year's race. After that we completed
the reverse 'lap', leaving the circuit just before Tertre Rouge and then making
our way back to the hotel.
As I indicated earlier, the team would soon be increasing to four
with Tony's arrival. Just before 4 pm, Tony had texted me to say that he
was just off the ferry and hoped to arrive in a couple of hours. I
confirmed that we would be back at the hotel by then to meet him. It
wasn't long after 6 pm that I decided to go outside for some fresh air only to
find that the 'Brera Rabbit' had just pulled up in the car park. Like
James the previous Saturday, it was great to see Tony again for the first time
since the end of the Le Mans trip last year. Arriving at this time also
meant that Tony was able to get straight into his room. We agreed to meet
again at 7.30 pm for a trip to.. guess where? Del Arte, of course!
We had another splendid meal at Del Arte, sitting outside in the
sunshine with Pizza Marocco's absolutely de rigeur for Tony, James and I, while
Nane enjoyed a Caesar salad. Tuesday soon drifted to a relaxing close as
we all looked forward to the first on-track action of the Le Mans week tomorrow
afternoon....
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