Aysedasi's Le Mans

After another brief look at some more stalls we went back to T17 via the underpass near to the main entrance, pausing to have a quick look in the Spark model shop.  I still have a hankering for a 1:18 model of my favourite Le Mans car, the Toyota TS020 (aka GT-One) but the prices are always prohibitive and they didn't have any anyway.  We arrived back at our seats in T17 at 1.40 pm in good time for our first sight of the Le Mans cars out on track as they came out for their first free practice session at 2 pm.  This was now a three hour session reduced from the four hours that it had been for many years.  We watched the whole of the session from our seats and it was full of drama with a shunt for the #8 Toyota and later a very nasty accident for the D'Station Aston when it was t-boned on the run down to Tertre Rouge by the Tower Motorsports Oreca, bringing out the red flags.  Thankfully both drivers were uninjured but both cars ended up needing new chassis.  The Toyotas headed up the timesheets at the end of the session with Cadillac and Porsche in close attendance and the Ferraris surprisingly well down the order.  Jota and Cool Racing had nearly two seconds on their LMP2 rivals while the GMB Aston Martin was fastest in GTEAm. 

We were conscious that after the end of this session at 5 pm there was a two-hour gap until the hour long qualifying session at 7 pm and then another two hours until the second free practice session at 10 pm, so this was the ideal time to nip back to the hotel to pick Allon up and also to collect our camping chairs and some warmer clothes, just in case the temperature dropped considerably as it often does in the later evenings.