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We finished
our meal, wondering what effect the loss of Audi's second car would have on the
race and started the walk up from the bottom of the Esses up the inside of the
circuit to the ACO's Espace Club where we rested for a while while the safety
cars and the following race cars continued to shepherd the field around the
circuit. I made another call home at this point as it was actually
possible to speak, although the dreadful noise of the band playing over by the Dunlop
Bridge was still quite a nuisance. (You'll gather that I've no interest at
all in waiting all year for the 24 Hours and then going to watch a band on
Saturday night instead.....!).
Eventually we
moved on, heading back to our grandstand where we were able to get some reviving
coffee and rest our legs. Of course we'd had a bit of a rest in the Espace
Club, but the food and drink available there was disappointingly poor compared to last
year. So having taken my last shot at Tertre Rouge at 22.20, my first in
the grandstand was timed at 01.23, an incredible 3 hours later. Having
said that, for the best part of two and a half hours of that time the safety car
had been out after the accident to the #1 Audi.
So we were by
now well into the night, and a really cold night at that, although I still hadn't got
my coat out of my rucksack - I somehow knew it was going to get a lot colder yet
and I thought I'd save my big yellow Michelin Man coat until I really needed it!
I carried on shooting from the grandstand in between cups of coffee to keep me
warm. Sitting here, just a stone's throw away from the Audi pits, with two
of the three garage doors now down and closed, it would have been fascinating to
know what was going through the minds of the team members just across the track.
But we were
all looking forward to finally heading away from the main garage area. We left the stand at around 2.20 am for what was thankfully a fairly short walk
back to the cars in the garage blanc. It was important to move around from
time to time as we had by now been up and about for well over 18 hours already
and the race wasn't even at the half-way point yet. Brilliant!
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