17 June 2008

Sleep? What's that?

And back. Did you miss me?

I did find all weekend (and indeed today) that I was receiving quite a lot of positive attention from ze females of this planet. Maybe I'm not as ugly as I thought? Or then again, maybe I have some hideous mark on my forehead.

*goes to check in mirror*

Arse.


That aside, I got back at 3am and got to work for ten. I quite obviously feel like utter, utter shite. I also pissed my neighbours off by having a shower the moment I got back, but frankly I don't care - I had to get clean after 5 days in a tent without the chance to. Gosh it felt good :)

The weekend itself was excellent. Good food, good beer (well, apparently - I was suitably restrained), good company, more good food and finally a cracking race. I shall now detail my weekend [with translations for those that don't follow motorsport as well as being bereft of cricketing knowledge. You know who you are.]......

......actually no I won't. I shall now summarise my weekend because I'm tired and I feel like shite*.

The Le Mans 24-hour race is (I believe) the oldest motor race in the world. It's held over a long part-road/part-track circuit (nearly 9 miles) which the top cars lap in just over 3 minutes at an average speed of 150+ mph. They keep this up for, as the name suggests, 24 hours - completing something approaching 400 laps. It is quite simply the best motor race in the world, without a doubt.

It's also basically four races in one as the 55 competing cars [those things that go brum-brum] were divided into four classes. They all go at different speeds and lap each other so many times that it gets rather confusing. Just about everyone gets round this by listening to the on-site radio station so it's not uncommon to see a bank of people laughing for no apparent reason due to the commentary (which is fairly unrestrained - my favourite description at one point was someone saying that the race was getting 'fattening' which is something I shall endeavour to introduce into polite conversation as often as possible).

Anyway, background info out of the way, we got down there on Thursday and found a damp camping spot before it got dark. The weather forecast for the weekend was roughly: rain, heavy rain, the water-borne punishment of the Lord, and finally, rain. We wandered off to the nearby (sort of) corner of Arnage and watched the end of qualifying. Here we discovered two things - firstly that the top cars (which are all diesel**) were really, really quiet, secondly that the other cars were fucking loud. We resolved to purchase some ear plugs for the race.

Friday we 'did' France. Saturday started for me at about 9:05am as the first Corvette [an american car] went up from Arnage. To give you some idea, the only thing separating our campsite from the nearest point of the circuit was half a mile of dense woodland. Half a mile. The Corvette going by in warm-up still sounded like an elephant farting right next to my head. Now we were awake we headed up to the circuit and found a great spot for the start (just down from the Dunlop esses) and lazed around in the blazing sunshine (it was good to see that weather forecasters are rubbish everywhere).


At 3pm the race started and 55 cars came blasting past. It's strange, but the different country's cars quite nicely fitted the respective national stereotype.*** [I'm not going to describe the race, you can look it up if you want to.] The Audi (which won) was grey and strangely sinister as it glided by with a whispered 'nnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeowwww'. It was also incredibly efficient (going further on a tank of fuel than its rival) and reliable. The Audi pit crew were also well-drilled and fast. The french however, in the shape of Peugot (who battled it out with Audi right until the end) was flash, very quick, utterly haphazard, exciting and when the pressure came on they folded completely and gave up. The british were a mixture of exceptionally good professionals (Aston Martin, which went by with a lovely 'NNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW') and eccentric amateurs. The epitome of the latter being a british team that, being funded like most privateer teams by having paying drivers, had a lady driver who just happened to be married to the main sponsor. She was clearly talented but started her stint about two hours in, messed up the apex on four corners in a row, reached a straight and then plowed it straight into a wall - needing roughly six hours in the garage being rebuilt. Her Le Mans driving experience lasting roughly 45 seconds.

The americans, in the loud and brash form of the Corvette (which went by with a sort of 'BBBBRRRAAAPPPPAPPPAAATTTAAPPPAAAAPPPAAATTTT') talked the talk, but sadly came second to the number one Aston Martin DB9R (which were numbered 009 and 007 - class :) ) and failed to walk the walk.

The exciting**** last hour (where the number one Peugot got within two minutes of the number one Audi) was real edge of the seat stuff. It rained heavily at one end of the circuit, while remaining bone-dry on the half we were sat by, and the Peugot driver decided to stay out of slicks [tyres without any grooves so slippery as an oiled eel in the wet] in an effort to catch the Audi on wets. The in-car shots of the french driver hurtling down the straight at roughly 200mph while sawing the steering wheel from side to side (because one of his wheels wasn't on straight!) in a desperate attempt to stay on the road were jaw-droppingly awesome. Sadly his heroics were all in vain and the Audi (driven by a Scotch amongst others) won.

All in all a great weekend, though the 11 hour trip back was not much fun yesterday!

Here are some photos to prove I was there:


English car about to get lapped by ze germans

A dutch bottle wall

I was in charge of the fire




*Did I mention that I felt like shite? Because I do y'know.
**No, really.
***National stereotypes are fun. And lazy. Just like the English.
****Or fattening, in fact.

5 Comments:

At 18 June 2008 at 09:36, Blogger Glamourpuss said...

I don't think I'd like the noise or the camping, but speed is very arousing.

Oh, and you forgot to mention how much fun the gender sterotypes can be - women drivers and all...

Glad you had boy fun ;-)

Puss

 
At 18 June 2008 at 22:27, Blogger Red Squirrel said...

Hey Puss - well it's hard to be toooo stereotypical re: women drivers seeing as there were 2 out of 165! And the other one (Ms. Ickx and therefore the daughter of a famous F1 driver) was just as quick as the men. No-one else totalled their car after 45 seconds though, and right in front of us too :)

 
At 19 June 2008 at 18:46, Blogger P said...

That fire looks kinda dangerous...

 
At 19 June 2008 at 19:42, Blogger Red Squirrel said...

That fire, Paula, was awesome incarnate :)

(Yeah, okay, I have a touch of the pyromaniac about me)

 
At 27 June 2008 at 08:24, Blogger SG said...

i followed you up to the word 'motorsport' (or whatever auto-y word you used and then you lost me but i dug the pret-ty pictures. especially the firey one.

waitaminnit... why aren't you w/the LCD at Glastonbury this weekend? LOL. ;-) dunno if it's for the same reasons i'm not but wild horses &c &c and you know the rest.

didja outdo my 116 non-stop purposefully sleepless hours when i attempted to outdo Sad Eyed Lady? didja? didja? i eagerly await... :-)

 

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