The LeMans Post

edit- highlighted the non lemans specific stuff, after i realized that this post is stupid long.


So now with two completely passed out mates I can get caught up. the past few days have been interesting to say the least. ill give you guys what exactly we did, but jim and I had so many other thoughts and musings while we were doing this, hopefully we will be able to post that stuff when we get the chance. by the way this may not be followed for awhile, since im off to florence in a couple days and im not sure where exactly jim (and his laptop) is going off to.

So at my last posting i was falling asleep in Deuville. Jim and I did so successfully. We also woke up at 2 am successfully. Desperate to fall asleep, we took a couple of dremamine. It worked. So well, that we missed our train to Le Mans....

well shit.

showed up at the train station and learned that we'd need to hop between a few towns to get to LeMans. Fine. got on a train to a little town named Liseiux, where we had a ocuple hours to go before our next train to Caen.

Liseux was a cool little town. Everything was cheap, which was lovely. we went to an amazing pastry shop and ate in front of this beautiful monestary where a nun walked by and greeted us. having gone to catholic school, i feared a beating, but go figure, nuns are really cool here. We stopped by another bakery for a big ass baguette (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and dropped like 3 euro on a bottle of wine. DAMN WHAT A GREAT COUNTRY.

so on we went to Caen, where we discovered that we'd be getting into LeMans pretty late. from here we decided to try to work out a sleeping situation and we decided on just picking hte nearest train ride from LeMans. booked a hotel after struggling to communicate with a cute french girl who worked at the station, and then left the rail station on a mission for.... a way to blow a few hours. Our goofing up of sleep schedules was really not paying dividends at this point. We would be in LeMans at 630. pitwalk ended at 8. shit.

so we had a beer in a pub at Caen and then headed back to the station. Every try to open a bottle of wine with a knife? we hadnt. we didnt do well, shattered the top of the bottle and received lots of disaproving looks from the locals. fuck em, were american (offially now the motto of the trip). got a couple of cups and got to drinking since i didnt feel like cutting my lips on broken glass. by we got to drinking i meant me. the whole bottle. with little help from my comrade. oopsies. this made for what would otherwise have been a miserable time at lemans massively enjoyable.

so we got to lemans ata round 630 and immediately went to the track to catch the end of pitwalk. we showed up at the front gate and go figure, they had run out of student tickets. thinking ourselves to be solidly screwed we decided to go check out the campsite next to the entrance.

We ran upon a ton of cool ass cars just hanging out. A supra, a ferrari Dino, astons, a TVR, a ford festiva RS, and all sort of cool automotive geekery was just chillin' out on the grass. everywhere else there were drunk englishmen, none of whom elected to wear shirts, and union jacks and camps which were producing amazing smelling barbeque. Super cool! we walked around until we saw a ticket vendor who had student tickets. we bought them and scurried off to try to catch the end of the pitwalk.

we get inside the gates and go to the top of the first hill we see. so im trying to get situated. i figure i know the track pretty well, so i try to see what im looking at. wait, is this maison blanche? the porsche curves? wtf, theres no hairpin, and the dunlop bridge is over where? i suspect that im looking at the smaller circuit. we ask a nice looking english speaker next to us what were looking at.

He literally spits out in the harshest scottish accent weve ever heard. "WHAT YOU ARE LOEOUKING AT IS THE BUGHAAAAATIII(PGGTHTHHT) CIRCUIT. HEAD UNDER THE TUNNEL AND GO LEFT, YOU CANT MEES THE PATTOCK ITLL BEEEE A DRAG WITH THOSE SAACKS THOUGH" oh yeah, weve got these 40 pound mofos on our back. sweet. so we hustle down, up a ton of stairs, go through the village, AAAAAAND GET THE GOD DAMN FENCE SHUT IN OUR FACE. FAAAAAAAUUUUCKKKKKKK.

so we walked back. uphill. again. we dont know how that is possible. hopped on the tram to the train station, and headed to the town of Lissometing (jim would know) where we would be spending the night. well that blew.

so we got to our host town for the night and checked into the best western. twas the night of the France opener for the world cup, so we caught the end of that and went out to a pub to have some food and a drink. Food was good, drink was better. So we had some more. The locals were just hanging out at this place having a good time, so we had a few pints and took off down the street. We spotted a bunch of young guys hanging out in an alley in front of a bar and decided to go check it out. it was all a bunch of dudes and they gave us funny looks as we went in, but when we got in it was this really cool lounge with people just hanging out and drinking. we decided to partake.

note- all the music we heard all night was american. yet no one speaks english. somethiing fishy here.

after heading back to the hotel we went to sleep.

Got up in the morning and headed towards leMans on the TGV, first class. that was bitchin. we arrived to lemans nice and early and headed to the track with the rest of the early birds. The crowd was fantastically international, french, german, italian, and lots of northern europeans.

We arrived and spotted the Porsche cup cars bombing the top of the Dunlop curve, rev matching and trail breaking and trying to avoid each other in a massive group. SWEET. Now it was time to find a place to ditch our bags for the weekend. We tried a few places unsuccessfully until we decided to try the LeMans museum. There, we managed to let them stow our bags in a back room they had. We seriously cant thank them enough for this :-) While we were there we decided to check out the museum...


wow. jim will post pictures. it was every bit of automotive sex you can imagine. The classics, from the buggatis that dominated the circuit in the 20s and 30s to other ground breaking historical cars that had Jim shaking. I got to see some of my favorite cars ever including the Porsche 917 longtail and the Bentley speed 8, Audi R8 ( no not the street car), the renown Mazda, Silk cut jaguars... unbelievable machinery. We hung out there and drooled for at least an hour. Around noon we went out to stake good seats for the start of the race. While we were waited we were treated to some classic races featuring old Group C LeMans cars (read- BADASS). We staked out some ground by the dunlop curve where we would see the field come down the front straight, Take the French Tricolors and come into the curve before tapping the brakes to go the other way. We took a nap and when we woke up it was an hour before the race and there was a wall of people behind us. LeMans attracts over 200K fans. neither of us have seen so many people in one place. it was nuts. After the national anthems there was the traditional flyover bearing the french colors (very cool) and the 24 hour race started. We watched 55 cars bomb ass towards us for a few hours. Badass to say the least. The most startling cars to hear were.... ANYTHING WITH AN AMERICAN V8. holy god. the corvettes, Saleens, and Ford GTs sounded otherworldy, pissed, loud, obnoxious. Weve never been so proud to be american.

so we took the next few hours to explore the circuit. look at exhibits, see the pit straight, see different corners. i wish i could put what we experienced into words but there is no way. it was violent, it was beautiful, it was truly awe inspiring. We had a conversation with a friendly british fellow whose first question after learning we were american was whether or not we like nascar. god dammit.

i noticed that there were a few different fans there. without a doubt, many fans were just guys out for a good time. the race was just a backdrop, they wanted to have a good time and get drunk and campout. Then then there were motoring enthusiasts, which is definitely most like the average sports car or indy car/F1 fan in the US. a fan which the US is desperately low on.

then we noticed that the majority of teh fans were simply sports fans. in europe, racing is just... another sport, like football, like rugby, people know it, pay attention to it, have their alleigances. it makes me wonder if it could ever acheive such status in the US... being that many people still wonder whether or not motor racing really is a sport, and dont know that motor racing beyond that nascar rubbish exists.

off my tangent. next came an even which is one of the highlights of... uh, my life. ENG-USA, soccer. we saw alot of painted faces and english jerseys and flags around. clearly they were excited. we had nothing that gave us away as american and kept a low profile. we ordered a couple of beers from the guinness hospitalty tent (including this delicious apple cidery shit) and headed off to the big screen that would be showing the game. we assummed wed find a massive bunch of english fans and maybe a few americans huddled in the corner.

we didnt. what we found was god damn terrifying.

british soccer hooligans. all painted up. literally, 500 of them which would grow to 1000 by kickoff. NO AMERICANS. NOT ONE. NO STARS AND STRIPES. OOPS. we quietly found a good place in the middle of the field to watch the game.

the fans started singing songs, doing chants, breaking shit, climbing shit. there were beach balls going around and a massive inflatable player. they sung songs about their favorite players, rooney, and gerrard. finally the hooligan leading it all asked OY ARE THERE ANY AMERICANS OUT THERE. jim and i hesitantly stood up and about 700 eyes locked on us.... and began yelling and heckling. we took a bow and waved sheepishly. i think we yelled some shit. we dont know. we sat down and the people around us suddenly seemed really intersted in us.

the guys in front of us were giving us shit for not knowing anything about soccer. they asked is david beckham or lebron james were on our team. we were playing dumb and talking to them and they were very cool. later though i decided to show them that yes, there were football fans in the states

"hey, dont girls play football in the US"
"yes they do, in fact our girls team is quite good"- fact
"is that your girls team playing now then"
"the team that your team is tied with? yes"
"oy, they are a bunch of girls"
"well, at least we didnt bring in the coach of the italian diving team to teach our team to play like girls"
"..."

sports illustrated, world cup preview, bitch.

Anyways, i was hoping that the telecast would start after the national anthems. of course it didnt. they sung a rousing rendition of god save the queen. We stood up and sung our national anthem when it was our time, while dealing with the folks behind us yelling the whole time. twas a very fun moment.

The guys behind us started talking to us and pretty soon people started throwing us beer and whiskey, since were american and obviously love jack daniels. no shit. soon we were joining in the english chants. we were relieved to see hte english score first, for it meant that we were more likely to escape alive. by the time hte US scored, we were solidly inebriated. we got up and yelled and high fived and jumped around like idiots. aaaand promptly sat down after it stopped being funny to us and there were a bunch of englishmen yelling at their goalie.

the guys behind us were awesome. we talked about got knows what. they were complementing great american innovations such as spring break, the wave, and bouncey balls. oh, and general yelling and public drinking and hooplah. we gave them such great british inventions such as hugh laurie. honest to god i dont remember that part of the conversation. it was thanks to this lovely shit called desperado. They claime that it is mexican. uh, its brewed by heineken. its basically beer with tequila worked into it. it tastes like a margarita-beer mix. and they had a mini keg of it.

at halftime, the british crowd requested that we sing some american football songs. they had us there. so what did we do?

we drunkenly decideed to sing the only american football song we knew. in front of maybe 900 brits, jim and i went through a screaming and rousing rendition of the aggie war hymm

gig em bitch.

they invited us out to their campsite. once again, camping at lemans is badass. they were out by maison blanche (forza geeks- the last chicane before hte front straight, where you see a ferris wheel to your left). we had some ribs there and put back a few drinks. we went back to the track with a mission- the mulsanne straight.

the mulsanne straight is a 5 mile or so straightaway on hte back of the circuit. on any other week, it is a public highway. now the straight is interrupted by 2 chicanes, but before that it was a place of pure insanity. cars would do 230 and 240 on it. cars would end up flipping that way. mulsanne is the stuff of legend. it is also completely off limits to spectators. reasonably so- the fastest cars still hit 215 back there before bombing the brakes before the chicane.

we knew that we would have to take an undtraditional route. we tried asking people, who all told us the same thing- there is no way in hell we would get back there. bullshit, said we. we exited the track and headed towards the town... and the fabled straight.

we got stopped by a marshall who told us to turn around. we went to the nearest campground, ditched our bags, and hopped a fence.
we creeped towards the sounds of engines.... and saw flashlights. immediately we hit the deck and prayed they wouldnt see us.

there we were in hte middle of a forest in france, flashlights passing right over us... until 10 minutes later we decided it was safe to keep moving. we hopped another fence, and we could hear the cars even clearer, see lights ahead. we saw a marshall asleep in a van and ran past him... we could see the fence. we just walked around it, and there we were.

what we saw then is beyond words. ill try though...

you see lights. you hear something. its coming closer. the lights get brighter, you hear a boom in your ear and you look to your right and the lights are getting smaller and theyre red.

it was car passing at what had to be 200. engines at full song. drivers probably taking a break to read the guages, passing by in violence, fury, a symphony of light and sound.

a couple of marshalls a few hundred yards down saw us and were watching us so we went over and gave ourselves up, claiming to be lost. they told us to go away but let us watch from a few yards back. jim and i sat up on a wall and took it all in.

guess whose camera was out of battery for all of this? yeah....

so we go back to the village where surprise, there is a bumpin ass party at teh guinness tent. its now 330 am. these guys are truly nuts. we decided to sneak into the paddock via the back, where the teams bring their wheels to get tires mounted. a quick hop of a fence and we ran around the paddock and vip areas. got to check out where all the retired cars are brought, and we even saw a couple of cars coming in on the flatbed, having been peeled off the track. we did see American corvette driver johnny o connel hanging out eating in his trailer, and snapped a quick picture of him, much to his bewilderment. didnt wanna bug him though, he looked like he was down for a nap soon.

after that we wandered around and enjoyed t symphony, before settling down to sleep at t dunlop curve. i could already see the sun peering over the horizon. screw it. eventually the sounds of race cars downshifting, brakes glowing rocked me to sleep.

MORNING TIIEEEIIIIIIMM. an asshole drunk german fuck who i pray dies young woke us up with a scream. for a moment, i contemplated murder.

jim and i were freezing. the temperature had randomly fallen to like 50 and we were in shorts and tshirts. we went to the only air conditioning we could find... an audi tent where they were showcasing a car.

basically audi had hired a bunch of pretty german girls to hang out with us and color. literally. for like an hour we colored and they told us about how cool munich was. this one girl thought that we were crazy for being from a state that allowed you to shoot anyone who was on your property. yes texans, this is what people abroad think we do. looking back on it, i think that our perceptions of other places might largely be based off of misinformation

except for our perception of the french. fuck em. england and germany and every single person weve met agree. they are assholes and do not deserve this beautiful country.

so, after that we went off to tetre rouge, the corner right before the mulsanne straight. cars were going through here pretty quickly. lots of cool pictures though and a great view of how hard these cars really grip, as they were going through the corner impossibly fast. jims got some pretty cool videos. we found a grassy hill to nap on and took our 2nd hour of sleep in.... at 10 am. we woke up hungry and saw a baller ass campground which had porsches, lambos, all sorts of crazy stuff. got some stupiid overpriced food and headed to the front straight to watch the finish.

if you dont give a shit, skip this part.

the battle for overall honors was going to come down to the german audi team, which had entered 3 cars, and the french peaugeots, who had 3 factory cars and had sold one car to a privateer team as an "insurance policy." these 4 basically took off from the start and dominated the race. the privateer team had some issues at night and fell behind the audis, which were still pursuing them. but one by one, the peaugots had issues. 2 of them had issues big enough to end teh race. one had now just fallen behind the audis. only a lap behind in th 17th hour, it was hauling ass to catch up. While it was lapping a slower GT class corvette (aka, the american racing team, which was at the time leading the class) it forced the vette off course and into the wall, ending the corevettes hopes. this pissed me off. i wanted more than anything to hear an american national anthem at the end of the race. at this point i wanted nothing more than to watch every peugot blow up.

and one by one... as they were in a neck in neck battle with the audis, thats what happened. finally, about 22 hours in, the final privateer peaugot which was hauling from 4th place to get on the podium, slowed down with an engine failure. this left audi 1,2, and 3. it also left a crowd of very dissapointed frenchmen (once again, HAH). This also meant that tom kristensen, a Danish national hero and lemans' all time winnignest driver would be taking a third place podium. this thrilled the danish fans and led to that being the most flown flag all day! oddly enough.

so a side note- a fellow by the name of Leh Keen was running his first lemans. Leh is a member on the Roadcourse section of supraforums.com which my dad and I frequent. I met him a few years ago when he came to drive the GSC motorsports supra at the national supra meet, and my dad and I have watched him progressed from a Grand am rookie to ALMS hotshoe. he was running his first ever 24 hours of lemans and his car finished 2nd, he had the honor of bringing it across the line. It was cool as hell seeing someone i knew on the podium at the worlds greatest sportscar race.

So the finish at lemans is a big deal. finishing is no easy task. the 3 audis made a formation and made the finish together, as the marshalls saluted them by waving every flag, a man standing on the track, as always has been the tradition in the 78 runnings of hte race, threw the checkers. we were right there for it. a mindblowing event i have seen on tv god knows how many times. we watched every car finish (less than half of them). and then rushed the track, as is the tradition. we hung out and listened to teh german national anthem and watched the drivers bathe each other in champagne.... really made my hair stand on end to see all of that in real life. 24 hours is a long time guys. seriously. we then wandered around a bit and caught the train home... completely exhausted.

finally at the train station we met the first americans we had found all weekend. the first was a mexican fellow who had been waiting his whole life to do it. it then dawned on us how damn lucky we are. a couple of 20 year old kids, and we were fulfilling this mans lifetime dream. (he had tried to get onto mulsanne, and failed). it really sunk in how damn lucky we are to be on this trip. so for everyone who is supporting us through us (who the hell are we kidding, our families) thank you. a billion times over. this weekend by itself made the whole trip worth it. it was the best of both of our lives... unparalleled by anything.

we then met a few more american students, took the train home with one. all car geeks like us. nice to see some familiar faces.

So the next day jim and i didnt leave the bed except to eat and do laundry. im having to rearrange my entire backpack so the room is a disaster. sofia and david came in randomly while jimi and i were asleep and judged me for such disaster. screw you guys.

burnt out on writing.

today we went to versailles. it was eye popping for sure. i took comfort in the fact that the last folks to live there wound up headless.

-so jim and david are waking up now. probably too late to go out so were gonna rest up for tomorrow. we basically have a day to see the rest of paris. and tomorrow we need to get back on our streak of drinking every single night. what a stupid country. off to milan in a couple of days.

just heard in our hotel room....

-we need to meet some american girls
-the point is to expose yourselves culturally
-french girls wont talk to us
-alas

-thats the jist of it.

-Vinnie