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Sitting there in that seat, one of perhaps 20
people in the whole of the pits grandstand, I still couldn't understand why
anyone would choose to go to the trouble of travelling to France once a year for
one of the world's greatest sporting events and then sleep right through the
most sublime 5-6 hours of it - it beats me, but then again, it always has!
I should emphasise that the photography is really
a by-product of my time at Le Mans. I'm not a professional photographer (as you
may have noticed!), nor can I really claim to be a serious amateur these days,
so taking photos is really a secondary consideration. I don't go to Le Mans
with the be-all and end-all of taking photographs - although I do enjoy doing
that and looking at them afterwards. The thought of going one year and actually
leaving the camera at home is really quite tempting - but it'll never
happen.....!
I was up in the grandstand when Benoit Treluyer
had his massive accident in the Pescarolo Peugeot which brought out the safety
car again. That also had the effect of slowing the cars down for my lens! I
moved around the grandstand quite a bit although I was by now aware of tiredness
really creeping up on me, as well as the desire to move on to another
vantage-point.
I was thankful as always to my good friend Paul
Truswell. Paul, if you don't know him, is one of the commentators on Radio Le
Mans - a far more knowledgable Le Mans 'anorak' than I! Paul has been an
ever-present on Radio Le Mans since 1988 and alongside John Hindhaugh, is for
most of us Le Mans fans, the voice of Radio Le Mans.
I'd been listening to
Radio Le Mans solidly since I returned to the circuit, at one time frantically
waving across to Paul in his commentary booth from my seat in the grandstand
when Jim Roller and Chuck Dressing were talking of people asleep in that very
grandstand. I wanted them to know that not everyone was sleeping!
All too soon - much, much too soon for me - the
first strains of dawn light began to colour the sky from black to blue. Almost
imperceptibly at first, but you knew it was happening and before long the Le
Mans night would be over for another year.
At 6.15, after a solid three hour stint, I
finally dragged my very weary legs back into action. I had less than two hours
now before my rendezvous with Ian and I wanted to get over to the other side of
the circuit on the tribunes. I left the grandstand and went through the
underpass and, for the first time for many years I decided to walk down to the
Ford Chicane.
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