Le Mans 2022 - Ayse's Story
Page 18 - Saturday 11th June - Off and Running...
Since I started going to Le Mans we had always had seats in the Durand grandstand (T17), other than my first year (2010) and my last year before Covid intervened (2019) when I/we had seats in the Pits Grandstand (T34) instead. I still love T34 as the view is marvelous although you sacrifice the view of the pits for an uninterrupted view of the cars heading along the start/finish straight. We had always sat in the front row on T17 on the basis that there was no-one to get in the way in front of us and we had more leg room. But the view was very much a compromise as far as photography is concerned because it's pretty much impossible to get decent shots of the cars due to the fencing. The other major drawback of the front row is that when the grandstand is poorly 'marshaled' it can get very difficult to see because of the people who insist on standing in the front row or clustered around the stairway. As a grandstand solely for the use of ACO members, it has at times been very well marshaled, with people being told in no uncertain terms to sit down and move away from the stairways, but that didn't happen this year. There was no involvement by staff at all and even though people were being asked to move or sit down, no sooner had one gone than he or she was replaced by one or more others. It was intensely frustrating, particularly as it was highly likely that many of the people clustered around the stairway didn't have tickets and shouldn't have been there at all. James, Lauren and I decided that this would be the last year in the front row for us and with Al's help, we started investigating alternative positions.
The pre-race festivities soon started to wind down. It was strange not to see Toby down on the grid with a team this year. He had moved out of racing and was now working for a manufacturer on their top of the range sportscar. The race got under way and quickly turned into what we expected - a Toyota benefit. The Glicks tried hard but just didn't have the consistent raw pace while the grandfathered Rebellion (Alpine) had all sorts of problems. Boy were we looking forward to 'new blood' in 2023!
Due to the packed grandstand I wasn't really able to go up to the top rows to take photos from there. Even there the view isn't perfect but it's a lot better than down at the front. So I didn't take a lot of photos from the stand at the start of the race this year.
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