Aysedasi's Le Mans

So we had finally reached the business end of the Le Mans trip and after a reasonable sleep I was awake initially at 5:00 am but managed to sleep on until 6:30 when my alarm went off. Setting an alarm was something new for me, but being race day, I was expecting it to be far busier getting into the circuit and was hoping for an early start. By 7:00 I was up and showered and dressed and had already Facetimed Jayne. We had previously agreed to leave the hotel at 8:00 am, but after meeting outside and heading off it seemed once driving that the roads were no busier than they had been on Wednesday and Thursday – So you can guess what's coming next! Yes, we drove on out to the Feuilette for breakfast... I'll freely admit that I had suffered from traffic paranoia all week, knowing that the event was sold out plus all the conversations on the various social media about how incredibly busy it was likely to be. The ACO had sent out several emails indicating alternative routes into the circuit , so they were expecting it to be busy too. My paranoia had led us to make some fairly early starts in the mornings but the only significant traffic we encountered all week was on Wednesday and Thursday evenings approaching and driving through Arnage village. Whenever we had driven to and from the circuit itself we had experienced no traffic issues at all and on leaving the Feuilette after breakfast we again had a simple run into the Expo car park which remarkably was actually even easier than any of the race morning journeys I had made in previous years to Parking Blanc. There was a lot of activity on the airfield as people sought to use the free parking there, but other than that there really wasn’t any significant traffic at all and only a queue of 3-4 cars on arriving at Expo.  After entering the car park we parked under the Expo ‘sunshades’ and we were ready to head into the circuit by 9:00 am. A quarter of an hour later we were sitting in our seats in T17 ready to watch the Ferrari Challenge race.

It was after we watched that race and the start of the Porsche Carrera Cup race that we suddenly remembered the annual Ten Tenths meeting and we left the stand to make our way over to the village. The timing of the meeting had been brought forward this year to 11 am because of the centenary parade which was scheduled to be held before the pre-race lineup of the competing cars. We were nearly the first to arrive, only Vincent beat us to the meeting area by the side of the Michelin stand/display. Before long the others started to arrive, including Pascal and Simon who set up the tables for all of the food and drink that people had brought with them. As is now my habit I stayed well away from the various ‘rocket fuels’ and homebrews that arrived at the tables. By 11:45 when we organised the team photo taken by Bernard (or at least on Bernard's camera), there were around 40 people there. This wasn't the largest turn out we've had over the years but a decent one nonetheless. 

I haven't recorded the names of everyone there, but with apologies to those I have inevitably missed those present included:

Pascal

Vincent

Amandine

Bernard

Dominique

Simon

Helen

Vincent

Ian

Guy

Phil

Scott

Robert

Victor

Dani

Kenn

Sean

Harry

Andrew

James

Lauren

Allon

James F

Nobby

Eric

Stéphane

Paul

Peter

David

George

Effa

Alex

Rene

Cammiel

Michael

John

Ker (who was there after we left)

and Christy.

(Anyone else who was there that I haven't included, drop me a line and I'll add you to the list).

We were quite keen to get back to our seats in T17 before the centenary parade started (which was a common theme) and we said our goodbyes (leaving Allon there to partake further of the food on offer!).