(So Why Would Anyone Choose To
Sleep Through This One?!)
We remained at Tertre Rouge
until just after 1 am and then walked back to the grandstand, taking up our
seats at the very top row of T17. We even managed to 'smuggle' Allon in as
well! Feeling rather peckish by now, James and I indulged in some food
from the cafe just inside the stand. We had what was curiously described
as a 'croustipoulet', a bread and chicken affair which I have to say was mildly
unpleasant - not to be tried again!
After watching for a while,
all of us were still deeply into the race, headphones now welded firmly to our
heads to keep abreast of the action, but as time was moving on we quit the
grandstand at about 2.15 am as the road behind the stand was pretty clear by
that time. Following our customary habit we drove out to Arnage first,
arriving there at about 2.50. The warmth of the evening had given away to
quite a chill in the early morning, the balmy nights that I remember from the
past seem to be so much rarer these days. So before heading into the
enclosure it was on with the thermal underwear, an extra pair of socks, a
thicker jumper and my big red insulated coat (yes the one I so cleverly left in
the hotel this time last year!). I also had my Senna woolly hat, I was
taking no chances this year after freezing my extremities off last year!
We took our folding chairs with us, leaving Allon in the car to get some sleep.
We 'made camp' on the bank on
the run towards Arnage corner so that we also had a decent view of the big
screen there and settled down to watch the race and see in the dawn. As
has become noticeable over the last few years, even in the early hours of the
morning, there were still a lot of people still watching the race. The
action itself was very much nip and tuck between Porsche and Audi, neither
holding that much of an advantage over the other for several hours.
It wasn't until after I
returned home from Le Mans and was looking at the photographs I'd taken that I
realised I hadn't taken a single photograph while we were at Arnage, only some
video footage. I don't recall making any conscious decision not to get the
camera out, although, as I've said countless times before, still photography is
hard enough from this location on the track and photography at night is almost
pointless as a spectator. You can't use flash here (unlike Tertre Rouge
where you can get away with it) as you just end up with a succession of
brightly-lit photographs of fencing and because it remains one of the darkest
places on the circuit that is accessible to the paying punters, low light and
slow shutter speed shots are largely doomed to failure. In actual fact, I
didn't take much video footage there either, just two relatively short snippets
of rather grainy video, with my camcorder hunting for focus much of the time.
But I was happy enough. I was enjoying the race, listening solidly to
Radio Le Mans by now, at the best time of the 24 Hours, in one of my favourite
spots. I was in my reasonably comfy chair, wrapped up pretty warm in all
my layers, remembering just how insufferably cold I'd been here a year ago!
There is however one specific memory that I'll
take with me from Arnage in 2015 and it will stay with me for a long time, much
as I've always remembered that first experience of watching the cars on the
Mulsanne Straight over the fence at the Restaurant des 24 Heures (or it might
have been Hunaudières...) on my first trip back in 1986. It was the same
in both race and qualifying - the utterly insane acceleration of the
Audis and Porsches away from Arnage corner. They were of course running
significantly faster in 2015 than ever before, regularly turning laps in the
3:19's and 20's (and less), a good 4-5 seconds faster than last year and way
under last year's pole time, but the acceleration out of the corner, the slowest
on the circuit, was mind-blowing. Standing right opposite the apex of the
corner and watching the cars blast away down towards the Porsche Curves, they
were like rocket-ships, the acceleration was incredible. I don't recall
ever being so taken with cars accelerating at such a stupendous rate of knots
before, it was mesmerising to watch and I feel privileged to have had the chance
to do so....
We stayed at Arnage until sunrise after another
all too short Le Mans night, before heading off to the car to make our way out
to Mulsanne Corner.
