Aysedasi's Le Mans

After our spell at La Chapelle Lauren headed back to T17 while James, Allon and I went into the ACO shop to look for a gift for Monsieur and Madame at the hotel. We thought it would be nice to give them something for the hotel itself and after some thought we ended up buying an aluminium centenary plaque which we hoped might eventually find itself put up on the wall at reception. We would of course buy some of our more customary gifts on Monday after the race to go with it. We were all back in our seats in T17 by 6:00 pm ready for the evening's celebrations, which started with vast numbers of marshals and ACO staff lining up on the start/finish straight.  We were lucky though to get to the grandstand when we did as the heavens opened and we had our first significant rain of the Le Mans week.  It was hard enough to cause the people milling around on the straight to put on their waterproofs and open their umbrellas, but fortunately it didn't last for all that long.  

It was around this time that we also met our seat neighbours in T17. (I could be wrong about this as it might have been that we met them first on Wednesday or Thursday but my notes at the time do say it was on Friday). I christened them ‘Stinky Pete’ and ‘Fragrant Frank’, largely as a result of the fact that the older of the two was smoking small cigars which really did stink!  We came to the conclusion that they were German from conversations we overheard and they were obviously father and son. I was convinced that having been a regular in this stand since 2011 I had seen them up at the top of the stand on previous occasions. I had learned (somewhat to my surprise) that some long standing ACO members are apparently able to reserve their seats from year to year (in the way that our friend Eric does), and I'm guessing that Pete and Frank also had this preferential treatment as those two seats were already unavailable when I made my booking within moments of ticketing opening to members on the 18th of October last year. How one attains this preferential treatment from the ACO is a mystery to me – after being a member for 26 years, I’ve certainly never had it!  To be fair Pete and Frank were harmless enough other than the fact that Pete was smoking his smelly cigars, although he desisted whenever he saw that we were eating. 

The arrival of the cars from where they had gathered up at the Dunlop bridge was preceded by an air display by the Patrouille de France, which was always very popular. 

By the time the cars started appearing on track there was a very decent crowd gathered in the grandstands opposite.  The cars weren't being driven at any speed as they came the wrong way down the straight to form up but the Mazda and the Matra were at least given a few throaty throttle blips by their drivers.  It was also good to see the Cadillac ‘Le Monstre’ out there. I assumed this to be the original on which my Facebook friend Derek Drinkwater had modelled his marvelous replica.

While this was going on we managed to make contact with Trevor Hermance who was down on the straight with the rest of the marshals and we did manage to finish our little game of ‘Where's Waldo?’ by spotting him, largely thanks to the US flag he was waving... In due course the cars made their way back up to Dunlop after a ‘Le Mans start’ with the drivers running across the track to the cars. While this was going on we walked through to spend some time next door in T18, the ACO grandstand which we could access directly from the back of T17.

While we were enjoying the celebrations we were visited by Tenthers Victor and Mal.  The festivities came to a close around 9:00 pm and we left the stand and made our way back to the car in Expo. The journey back to the hotel was probably the easiest so far not even being delayed by the ‘roundabout of woe’ and we arrived back at about 9:40. I then spent a while copying across the photos and videos from the day as well as Facetiming Jayne and then turned in, hopefully for a good night of sleep - my last before Sunday evening.