Ayse's 'Occasional Blog'
Friday 11th June 2021
50,000
As a member, I received an email from the ACO yesterday to tell me that there will be spectators at Le Mans this year. 50,000. ACO members will have 'first dibs' on 17th June and if there are any tickets left (which I doubt), they will then go on sale to the general public. The website also has the news -
and suggests that the crowd limitation is as set by government. There is no mention of the 'villages' of 5000 that the ACO talked about prior to the race going behind closed doors last year, but it refers to 'several' campsites and car parks being available. No doubt it will all be carefully managed. There will be no access to the circuit until the Wednesday which means that no-one will be allowed to be present for scrutineering or the Test Day. There will be no concerts and no funfair, but other 'entertainment' will be provided.
I know that some members of our group have already made decisions not to go. It is as yet unknown what the Covid situation will be like in two months time and for the sake of those who are still banking on being there, we can only hope that the situation will continue to improve. Vaccinations are continuing apace of course (I had my second on 31st May) but those travelling will need some formal recognition - acceptable to the French/EU authorities - that they are safe to go. I suspect that this will not be an insurmountable hurdle.
This weekend sees the second round of the WEC season, the 8 hours of Portimao and the debut of the Glickenhaus 007 which I've been following with great interest. Hopefully Toby will be there with G Drive again.
(Edit - I'd forgotten that G Drive were only doing Spa and Le Mans in the WEC).
As far as I'm concerned, I've finally put up some kind of 'story' for last year's race, as I needed to, simply for continuation reasons and I've also put up a revised 1998 story and have now moved on to 1999, which should be finished in a few days. It's been a funny week. If it wasn't for Covid I would have been at Le Mans this week and for some reason I've missed it even more so than at this time last year, when I had a reasonable hope of being at the race in September. As things stand, I am left trying to look forward to 2022....
