Aysedasi's Le Mans

Le Mans 1991 - Ayse's Story

Page 2 - Arrival, Tents and 'Feu!'

The garage rouge was reached in due course, and after spending just a few minutes in the space allotted to us by the car park marshal, we sneaked down to the bottom of the car park, to what had become a favourite spot.  The marshals weren't too keen on our manoeuvres, but were far too busy dealing with the stream of cars coming into the car park to worry about us. We decided to set up the tents before we made our way into the circuit.  I always feel a bit of a spare part at this point in the proceedings.  It’s not that I don't want to help (bearing in mind that I never plan to sleep during the race anyway), I'm simply not the world's greatest tent-builder!  I therefore helped where I could, but to be honest, I was itching to get into the circuit and sample that wonderful pre-race atmosphere.  I therefore contented myself by taking photographs of the others, hard at work!

On entering the circuit, we were fortunate enough to be there at the right time, and received complimentary ticket holders and pens from the Gitanes girls.  I still have both, and the ticket holder has been used several times since, both in France and the UK.  From the entrance it was on to the tribunes, and I resisted the temptation to split up from the others, as Ian began to lead the familiar way through the crowds to a suitable vantage point for the driver presentations.  I managed to get a few snaps of the fastest drivers (the tent-erecting procedures had meant that we missed quite a bit of the presentations).  This included a shot of two German drivers who would soon find themselves in F1, Karl Wendlinger, and, future multiple world champion, Michael Schumacher.

So who would win the race?  Despite the fact that they were starting from the front, no-one really believed that the Peugeots would have the staying power to be there at 4.00 p.m. on Sunday.  The speed, maybe, but not the stamina.  In order to further enhance the chances of the 3.5 litre cars, another tweak to the regulations required that the turbocharged cars carry an additional weight penalty.  For the Porsches, Mercedes and Jaguars, this would be a whopping 1000 kgs, but the smaller Mazdas would have the advantage of having to carry only an additional 830 kgs.  This, together with the invaluable assistance of six-time winner Jacky Ickx as team manager, would give them an advantage the worth of which few had seriously considered before the race.

In order to try and combat this disadvantage, the Jaguars had even larger 7.4 litre engines (not turbocharged, of course) for this race.  Would they be able to keep up the pace carrying the extra weight?  All of the sensible money appeared to be with another Mercedes victory, as in 1989.

We watched the beginning of the race from the tribunes, with the dark, grey clouds coming ever closer.  But still the rain held off.  One of the more exciting points of the early laps came when Peugeot 5 suffered a fire when re-fuelling.  I heard the commentator shout "Feu!", and with that, several thousand (mostly French) heads turned in the direction of the No. 5 pit, and I just managed to squeeze off a rather out of focus shot of the flames licking around the top of the fuel container.