Pescarolo interview...

[Fab]

Duser, a member of the french forum Le Mans Racing, reports two hours of Pescarolo interview on the weekly broadcast "Motors" :

- car and team are reliable, and they play for a place in the top five this year,
- extremely worried about the track (too much shops and firms around) : harder and harder to close the road during 48 hours ; and listen that : La Sarthe is buying terrains to move the track in the inside !
- see a future for prototypes if they run GT/rpototypes races ; good opinion on the Le Mans Tournament
- he says he's not given up driving !!!

[Fab]

Funny to see that nobody here seems to be chocked by the fact that the whole Hunaudières straight could me moved in the inside... Or my english was maybe not clear enough...

[AllonFS]

Fab, thanks for pointing out that part of the interview. This has come up before, but Henri seems to suggest that the ACO is now actively buying up land for such a move. Are we just talking about the Mulsanne, and if so are we a lot closer to such a move than we previously thought? Is there anything official about this, and should we assume that if this damned thing was built there would be no better viewing of it and they would still keep the wretched chicanes?

Please can someone post the link to the proposed track changes again? Last time this came up (late last year I think) someone came up with some plans, possibly a few years old. I'm very glad that I made the effort to crawl through the fields and get a view of the Mulsanne last year, it could be another part of the classic layout to be lost.

[Fab]

Those news are coming from Henri Pescarolo, so nothing's official, but we could take what he says for something serious...

For the track : nothing. What we had was 70' maps. Not update at all...

Let's wait, maybe we'll lose the historical circuit, but we could have something new and interresting. After all, the track met a lot of changes in the last 80 years, and the race is still here...

Things changes, the race is in our minds, and we have our memories to glue the things through the years...

[JAG]

i have no problem with the ACO relocating some of the circuit, after all it will become one of the greatest permanent road courses owned 100% by the ACO.

without the constraints of the Trees/open road etc. they could even improve on the current circuit with a clean sheet of paper.

Wonder if they could circumvent the FIA 2 mile straight rule by having big sweeping turns to break up the straight rather than the tight chicanwes currently in place.

Isn't there already a new mulasanne to replace the old one for road traffic.

[SL]

I saw that, but having seen reports before I not really took it in.

If they are building along the straight there must be a clause in the lease/land sale to allow for the race - I think these are called 'Grandfather Rights'. That is the race has been around long enough for people to be aware that the road is closed before they build on the site.

Whilst I am pleased that the ACO is taking measures to secure land, I hope they do not reduce the track lenth. One of the features of LM is the high speed nature of the track and the overall lap distance. Trimming it down, as at Spa, will not do. It is the last of the great long circuits.

I would have thought by now that the all the racing top brass would see the huge amounts of people that attend a basic one off event, and the manufactor, tyre, fuel supplier interest still around and thus support the event. Audi, Ford, Jag, Dunlop, Shell, Mobil etc still advertise on winning the event (Dunlop last won in 1991, although have 50% success rate to date).

Rant over........

Simon