Sir_Dave
ClioSport Trader
Right ho, ladies & gentlemen, welcome to the 1st review of the FailSport Le Mans Tour 2011. I’ll attempt to keep it short & sweet, but will no doubt fail spectacularly, leading to a thread of waffle & bollox like usual.
I won’t include many pictures of the actual race, as quite frankly, my pictures are fairly appalling, & after spending a week with Vish, a £90 Sony camera isn’t really suitable for getting that perfect shot of a 200mph Audi 300m away. So ill leave all the poncy panning/night-time/in-focus stuff to him …
So, after a rather hectic journey down to Dover, caused by the Highways Agency digging up the only main road/motorway into the area, during Le Mans week, we made it onto the ferry with a mere 5 minutes to go. Panic over, we set about buying some silly hats, not sure why, but it seemed the right thing to do at the time:
It’s safe to say, whilst we all looked like n0bs, Tom’s beret was worst.
In France, it seemed appropriate to admire Nick’s A3 and whilst distracting him with tales of woeful understeer & lack of steering feel, draw a huge c0(k on the side of his car. No pics im afraid, but im sure someone will have some.
Upon arriving in Le Mans, some crazy Dutch had pacrked their huge tent in our space, so after some discussion, ie us shouting & waving our arms around, they got out the way and allowed us to put up our ‘living quarters’. At this point, id like to point out that Mike had drunk 8 pints on the way down, requiring at least 5 pi55 stops. We also found power for our fridge, & got on with stocking it:
Once a few beers had been drunk, we watched qualifying, etc.
Then on the Friday, we did the pit walkabout, where Nick asked who the ‘tw4t in the tartan’ was:
We also went & saw the Northeners who were a lovely bunch as normal. In addition, being from the North, they had camped as far away from civilisation as possible, in what appeared to be a huge field. The lack of burger bar upset me tbh. As did the fact that I had had to walk approx. 15 miles from Houx to get to their site.
In the evening, Mad Friday came round, & Tom’s brother Dom turned up, in a Panda Suit, which he donned for the rest of the weekend. James also dressed up as a very confused army man.
The following day, there was a race on, so we went & watched:
The Panda took photos:
As did some people with silly hats:
Later on, Mike decided to leave his scent on a nearby wall:
After a long time, the race drew to a close, with Audi winning by only 14 seconds over Peugeot, who if their driver hadn’t binned it, would have won:
Obviously, Audi were miffed that they didn’t achieve a 1,2,3 but rumour has it that they were happy that both their cars crashed due to terminal oversteer rather than the usual understeer of the road cars.
Obviously, we then got drunk again, & went for a Chinese. Later returning to the camp to burn our rubbish, etc:
Some dodgy looking Asian pushing a trolley:
Some dodgy looking Ginger trying to cut down a tree with a spatula:
Not even a climb proof fence could keep Mike from escaping for more wire wood:
Awesome trip, already planning next year.
