[LM24] Le Mans Diary Part 3

[Liz]

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2002

It isn’t raining at present. The toilets and sinks were open across the road when I got up, but not the showers. I have been down the street, as I am the first one up, and have washed my hair in the sink, preferring the risk of bronchitis to the risk of cooties. My hair had not been washed since Saturday! The French man who was cleaning up looked at me with a disapproving look that said plainly that I should have waited until the showers opened at 10:00. I gave him a look back that basically said Nutz to you.

Cars are beginning to test on the runway across the camp from us. A Ferrari can go up 4 gears before it runs out of space.

A lot more people have come in, many in big motor homes that have satellite dishes on top. Every time they power them up, they blow the circuit breakers and Steve has to grab a walkie talkie and rush to the junction box to get us back on line.

Once everyone got up, Karen and I went to town to do laundry, which was surprisingly easy, and buy French sporting newspapers and magazines and have an ice cream or so. We hung up the wash behind the marquee, fixed lunch, and then I decided it was time I got up to the circuit. It’s not hard to find from here – you just walk up the road to the left and you come to the gate, pick your way through the construction – no sense putting anything up until the day, after all -- then walk around through the tunnel (watching out carefully as it’s a car tunnel and you’re not supposed to be in there) and then you come out in the village.

The paddock is right where I remembered it (the Corvette sign in front of it this year says May the Force be With Us—(as if)) but this year I don’t have my expensive access tickets so I just walked in as if I belonged there and nobody said a word. I wandered up and down to find out where all the guys are, went out into the pitlane and took some photos of the Spyker from every angle, found the Racers Group, Konrad Saleen, Freisinger (which is a hard one to find) and all the other ones that were pretty much where everyone were last year. The Spyker guys always look so surprised when I tell them that I love their car. So many people think it is as ugly as Satan choked in sin, but I think it’s a nice change from the cookie cutter technopark Porsches on every side. So there. There are not a lot of drivers around so far, but likely we’ll see more of them tomorrow and Friday. I also saw the two cars that are here to do the Michel Vallente movie. The “Leader” (the bad guy) is driving a tarted-up Panoz, and his garage looks gloomy and sparse.

I went out the back gate and up into the village and found the place where the Bentley stuff was last year is now devoted to the movie, but Bentley is not too far away. So I got the stuff on offer there, then went up to get my ACO shirt and posters, and many other goodies that are to be taken home for the kids and for my friends. The ACO is not open for business yet. I will return tomorrow to see what they are doing.

Then I tried to get back into the paddock through the door that I left through, but an unsmiling French [censored] said I could not go through that door. So I went round the front, and lo and behold I ran into Terry Borcheller, Saleen driver extraordinaire. It seems that you can get into any place in Le Mans if you have a driver at your right hand, and nobody notices that you have walked past the sign that basically says if you don’t have the proper credentials, you’ll be folded, spindled and mutilated and deported … and once you’re inside, nobody asks if you belong there because they figure somebody else has already vouchered you in! Terry is much happier than he was in Sebring, and asked if I was camping and if “your girl friend [Linda]” was with me. I told him I’d come with a bunch of friends from England and he seemed to be impressed by that, and he said other things that you will read about in the interview he gave me, later on.

More pictures and more looking about, and more hanging about the Spyker Squadron coveting their jackets (I will ask how I can get one when I get a chance) … and then off to look up some more souvenirs. I met up with a Frenchman in one shop who asked if I were American and when I said “Canadian, from Toronto” his friend said, “I lived in Toronto and I love the Toronto Argonauts.” I did not say “So YOU are the one” … nobody in Toronto gives the Argos much attention, even though you can now get a free ride to the game and two dozen Krispy Kremes with every ticket. But the other fellow had lived in Montreal for a while in the ‘90s and will be at Mid Ohio, and we had a nice chat about racing in all its many forms. He thought nothing much of TGF either, but he had met Senna and liked him. When I mentioned I had been a Prost girl, he made a face. He said, “I don’t like Prost; he was too --- too French!” When I grinned at him he laughed and said, “I am French, I can say that.” He is very enthusiastic about Kevin Buckner, who is in The Racers Group (partnered by Lucas Luhr and Timo Bernhardt of Alex Job Racing), although he concedes that Kevin lacks experience on a track with fast corners and is not the youngest guy on the grid. He also liked the BMWs in the ALMS and thought the race was much better with the BMWS to give the Porsche drivers a little winding up. Naturally as an AJR girl I don’t agree! This year Sascha will be the champion as indeed he should have been last year if his competition had been playing in equal equipment.

Tonight we had the first two sessions of night racing, and I discovered that the race will go right past our campsite. I may be able to get some good photos. I hope I will find a better place to stand though, as from here you can see the cars going away but they are very small by the time they come into range. My camera is not really good at night but there are no fences to negotiate here and we will see what we will see.

Now as you can see the racing has begun, and tomorrow I will have more to report from the pitlane and hopefully more driver tidbits to relate. For now, that is all I have to report. Time to get a beer and watch a bunch of guys from Luxembourg try to put up a tent with instructions written in Japanese. They’re making heavy work of it and actually it’s pretty funny. If you’re easily amused. The sun is shining, the cars are running, and I am quite prepared to be easily amused from this point on, believe me!

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2002

The sun is not out yet but is expected, and the showers and washrooms across the campsite are now open for business. They are new and so far not many people know about them. They are only open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and after that you have to go share the ones across the field with about a million Germans. It’s a good idea to get down there right away in the morning and get it over with. Plenty of hot water and the place is pretty clean so far.

The racing last night was quite interesting and most of the cars set good times without actually hitting each other much. Mark Blundell in the lead MG says that the car is good so far, although he’s waiting for an empty track before he lets out all the stops. At the break he was 9th fastest at 3.43.130. (After the break he tapped the wall and noodged up the suspension, but no real damage done.) By that point the other MG was in the pits for the evening. It seems Johnny Kane missed a shift on the way up the Mulsanne Straight and dropped a valve, necessitating a full engine change before the car can be used again. Although he got a lot of grief for it, this is really not a bad place to make a mistake like that. The Radio Le Mans guys were scornful about the Spyker, which was very fast out of the box, too, but for their information and yours, it was a very reliable car at Sebring and only an inconveniently parked Porsche caused its demise. The Spyker is a good car. So there.

It was well after the break before the Canadian Car (the MDB Panoz Handbag Special) came out on the track, but once it did get out there it was quick out of the box. The only other car that didn’t come out and do much was the Condo Racing entry, which is a Porsche. Lucas and Timo in the Racers Group car (mostly Lucas though, who is Alex Job’s qualifier) are at the top of the time sheets for the GT3R class, almost 4 seconds clear of the next car, which is not Freisinger (where his teammates Sascha and Jorge are driving.) It’s not usual for Sascha and Lucas to be split up and I expect they are enjoying the chance to fight with each other to prove which is the one that really makes the car go! The Prodrive Ferrari has solved a lot of its teething problems and is now reliable and the drivers are claiming to be best friends and probably have forgotten how they detested each other in the BTCC. Except for Enge who is still wondering what that is all about, I suppose.

The cars ran until midnight and we went inside to watch “Match of the Day” and wait for them to finish up. The noise is quite literally ear-splitting and makes it difficult to carry on any sort of conversation although it’s pleasant in and of itself. The Panoz, Corvette and Morgan all have such snarly engines and the others just howl as they pass by us. At midnight, despite the temptation to stay up and watch the Argentines burst into tears on the pitch after being eliminated from Cup play, we packed up our tents and went to bed.

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