[LM24] I'm bored with Le Mans

[Heebeegeetee]

Is it me, but I really don’t think I can face Le Mans again, not for a few years, anyway. The biggest disappointment for me this year was to have seen what they have done with Indianapolis corner. That corner was simply the greatest place to watch powerful race cars. Now we find they’ve erected a fence straight through the middle of the spectator banking. It’s absolutely terrible. Ranks with the dropping of the Safari rally from the WRC calendar. Tragic, it is.

If they would have put a big screen at Indianapolis I could have watched the whole race from there. After all, there is plenty of food and drink there, toilets, car park/camping, with the same facilities (!) as all the other campsites. Now it’s gone.

Coupled with the loss of viewing at the restaurant on the straight, it’s just too much. The famous drop down to the esses has been emancipated. The crowds seem to get bigger each year, although not that many of them seem to be actually watching the race at any point. But this makes watching from the Dunlop chicane unpleasant, unless you go there at 4am.

The grids are hopeless, with seemingly just one professional team dominating, pursued by amateurish ‘Le Mans specialists’. Next year the dominating team will be called Bentleys, so there will be thousands of ****ed up, bare-chested tattooed Brits chanting “Engerland! Engerland! Engerland!”, completely ignoring the fact that the cars are German, and the company is German owned.

The ferry prices have gone through the roof, so it’s no longer the good value weekend it once was. Interestingly, the French part of the deal, ie ticket, hotel, food & drink prices, have barely changed.

Nope, I think I’m going to miss it, for the first time in eighteen years. I have a friend racing in the classic support race – but then again, I can’t face those ferry prices just for that.

I might give the Nurburgring 24 hours a go.