Two weeks ago me and mon frere and I had a long weekend holiday in Le Mans, for the occasion of the 24 hour race. There's probably little of interest in the rest of the post if you don't know what that is, so you might not want to bother. Sorry. It was very nice to have a holiday in the middle of a hectic time at work and shortly after my exams, and it was rather good to be able to make the kind of silly jokes with Andy which Elspeth Disapproves Of.
We drove down on the thursday morning, spotting various sportscars which we were certain would be going all the way to Le Mans with us. In fact, there certainly was one Caterham which we saw both on the M25 and, hours later, at the campsite. We also drove down with a variety of Lotuses. I'm glad we chose to take Andy's Mini Cooper rather than our Fiesta, otherwise I might have felt a bit embarrassed.
Cars were definitely the main attraction of the weekend, from service stations packed with sports cars on the way down, to groups of them sitting around getting dusty in the campsites, the 'rest day' parade in Le Mans town, warm up races of pre-and post-war racing cars, to twenty four hours of solid racing. It really didn't sink in until we were eating dinner during the race, about 3 hours in, at which point any of the racing we're used to seeing would have finished twice over, that endurance racing is phenomenal. The cars aren't just pootling round, they're racing. The winning car this year went 380 laps. That's 5187km. That's heading towards being the radius of the Earth. I also loved the sheer noise of it all. Some cars roared, some squealed, but they were all deafening. Except for the Audis, which hummed. Apparently it's quite a big thing that Audi entered with diesel engines this year - the first time diesel engines have raced at Le Mans - and they only went and won. The 6th win of 7 for Audi, so they probably know what they're doing.
Right, some pictures.
A piece of a Pescarolo. The challengers to Audi this year in the LMP1 category. Oh yeah - there are four distinct classes of cars in the race, with different specifications, all racing at the same time in the one big race and in their own individual races. There are LMP1 and LMP2 cars, which are custom made 'prototype' cars, and there are GT1 and GT2 cars which are based, somewhat loosely, on production cars. These are your Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin types. I like how I managed to (accidentally) capture the pit sign in the wheel arch here.
Cars forming up for the parade in Le Mans, in front of the rather striking cathedral.
We had decided to walk into town for the parade, after looking at the map and judgin it to be about an hour's walk, tops. It was a good two hours. We then stood up for most of the next few hours, and then walked back again. We kepy ourselves amused by pretending we had big round heads. Nice one.
This was part of the rather lengthy warm-up to the race. I decided to support this Porsche in the GT2 because it was the prettiest. It disappeared sometime in the night, sadly.
This is one of the cars we were really supporting - the Aston Martin 007 (the other one was numbered 009). Very stylish, and they pushed the nasty American Corvettes right to the end. 009 was leading GT2 for most of the race, then got a clutch problem giving the race to the 64 Corvette.
A car going past at night. It wasn't quite that yellow in reality. Or that blurry.
The first of the winners. Winning the overall race and LMP1, the number 8 Audi taking the chequered flag.
The aforementioned nasty American Corvette. Very impressively though, it kept running for the whole race without any major problems. And it's yellow, which is nice, so I'll let it off.
Another class winner, the RML Lola winning the LMP2. This one was definitely the class of its field, and benefited from having "fewer breakdowns than anyone else".
The final class winner, and the only one which was really any kind of durprise. Apparently the first time a non-Porsche has won, or indeed finished on the podium, in GT2, was the nice orange Panoz.
The last one. As thousands and thousands of people flocked to the podium for the presentations (we had cunningly got ourselves a grandstand right opposite it), the pickup trucks started rolling in with the casualties. This one is worthy of note, being the first Lamborghini to race at Le Mans. I was quietly rooting for it as it really stood out from the crowd and produced a real screech of an engine note, but it wasn't to be.
All in, a great time. Thank you to Andy for suggesting the trip and coming along!
PS. When camping without your wife, remember that you'll have to think about food-type-stuff yourself. Forgetting the key item of equipment when pretty much all of your dinners and breakfasts are in tins was a bit silly. But hey, at least I remembered to pack some pants.
