Tales of Le Mans 2005

[huggybear]

I'm sure someone will beat this but.....
Left home 5.45 am for porstmouth. 7am on the m27 nr winchester the jensen conked out. Bad, but not as bad as when a van careered into us shortly afterwards and didn't stop. So, AA back to swindon, get a call to say someone has walked into a police station to admit hitting us, unload the interceptor, load up the cayenne, just off now to give a statement to the local police, and then off for le mans again.
So if you see some twats looking like extras from footballers wives poncing round LM in a black porsche cayenne don't be to harsh on them.....it might be us and we have had a reasonably hard le mans so far, what with it only being Thursday and all!
Enjoy

[hgb]

Oh dear, that sounds like the least someone needs now. I hope the Jensen is not  looking to badly. Good luck with your second attempt.

[huggybear]

Only me again. Got half an hour up the M4 before realising we had no documents for the porker - back home now, setting off again shortly.
Keep smiling

[ecurie]

You might make it in time for Le Mans 2006

[huggybear]

They did get there eventually and realised when they were docking in at Caen that the camping pass was still in the window of the Jensen! I have heard from them today and they were able to buy another pass from someone and are now having a great time!  from the wife..

[smokie]

OK, this is now the Official Tales of 2005 Thread.

Where to start?

Well at the start I guess. Arrival at Le Mans, somewhat later than plan, on Sunday evening. Thanks to the wonders of technology I knew that others had made it onto Maison Blanche. By the time I got there they'd installed a (rather attractive) jobsworth on the site who definitely couldn't be persuaded to let me on site.

So Brian says Try the Karting Nord entrance.

So off I trek. When the ACO guard on the entrance asked if I was for Maison Blanche I thought I was about to get turned away. But he let me in!

So, round the left perimeter of the kart track, along the side of the track then ONTO THE TRACK!!!

I've never driven that part of the track before, what with it being private. I wonder how many other people have towed a caravan there too???

By the time Brian arrived at the trackside to show me where to get in, I was down by the grandstands!!! So I had to do it again, against the "traffic".

Small downside was catching the side of the 'van on the metal gatepost but the damage was light...

When they have the 24h du Caravan Luggers I won't have to qualify!!!

[Simon (WRC GT4)]

I'm sure someone will beat this but.....
Left home 5.45 am for porstmouth. 7am on the m27 nr winchester the jensen conked out. Bad, but not as bad as when a van careered into us shortly afterwards and didn't stop. So, AA back to swindon, get a call to say someone has walked into a police station to admit hitting us, unload the interceptor, load up the cayenne, just off now to give a statement to the local police, and then off for le mans again.
So if you see some tw**ts looking like extras from footballers wives poncing round LM in a black porsche cayenne don't be to harsh on them.....it might be us and we have had a reasonably hard le mans so far, what with it only being Thursday and all!
Enjoy

From Swindon!!!!! you only had to ask, had plenty of room and also left on thurs  

[hgb]

They did get there eventually and realised when they were docking in at Caen that the camping pass was still in the window of the Jensen! I have heard from them today and they were able to buy another pass from someone and are now having a great time!  from the wife..

Well, this goes into the books... thanks for sharing huggybear... good wife.

[vqdave]

That is unlucky!

We made it there and back safely in the £50 Merc, Bobblehat spotted us by the allotments near the porker curves and BSJ and said hi which was nice, just before we set off for a night in Rouen.

Sunday morning was good, 2 of us managed to get press passes and went to the top of the main grandstand, and got in the pits for a good mooch, and even got to be in one of the team garages during a pit stop, all very exciting. Photos and reports to follow.

Hope everyone else made it back in OK?

[Russ]

The Fred Dibnah memorial tour got off to a shaky start...nothing quite so unfortunate here, but we arrived at the Pompy Dock to get a call that we'd left one of the mountain bike seats in the street when we left... fortunately that was only a 15 minute round trip to make the ferry so no real drama.

...the drama came on Friday night after the Drivers parade... it was gone midnight, we were pretty well hammered and made our way back to where we locked our bikes up. By the time four of our five had found it, we were completely unaware that our number 5 was missing in action. A few attempts to locate him failed and our spirits were a little down when it transpired a French student who had joined us for most of the evening had stumbled across our fallen soldier in the main square just spaced out - half a bottle of wine in his hand and only just able to walk!

Following a couple of attempts to put the soldier on his bike failed with some very poor demonstrations of balance, some disagreements with the laws of gravity and some messy bike-chain arguments we had to bundled him onto a cab I escorted him back to base camp. We couldn't leave a man down in the field after all!

I've never seen somebody looking so rough in the morning in all my days! Although the 38 degrees in his tent for most of the morning probably didn't help him much.

On to better things... Sunday, Fathers Day, and 4 of us opening the cards/gifts from our little ones. then came the big surprise... In one of the most generous gestures I've know, Gaz had booked all of us in for one of the Helicopter flights!! Absolutely fantastic! Seeing the cars flying down the Mulsane going even faster than the chopper was fantastic!

HA roundabout on Sunday night saw a £750 firework display, all set up under the lampposts and trees for maximum danger factor! Thanks to those guys for an excellent display!

[huggybear]

We made it back! Thankfully no cruel jibes about the Cayenne. We put the whole sorry tale behind us and had the most fantastic time.
We think the bumper bollox may have been cursed - they brought nothing but bad luck. My Dad found them most unsavoury from the start - however, with a couple of bottles of champagne inside him we did get some photos - predictable poses that will horrify him now he's sober ( should be sober by now, I think)
As for the jensen - initial problem lay with the injection computer going gobbledeegook - I had it rebooted in 5 minutes and running fine. I can't hold it against the car, the computer that controls my speech, fine motor skills and bad langauge firewall failed on Friday night  - I guess that maybe stella artois related, I'll continue the research! The van driver hadn't gone to the police to admit hitting us, someone out there saw him bounce off us and not stop and reported him - if you're out  there, THANK YOU. He has not produced his documents yet but fingers crossed he's insured. My understanding is that if he isn't insured my fully comp covers me except for the excess and I have to make a case to the MIB (?) to get my no claims re-instated - anyone any wiser? The damage runs full length but we're talking flattened panels rather than ripped metal - not that it will be easy to fix either way. Another THANK YOU to the 996 driver who had a spare BSJ camping permit and sold it at cost. THANK YOU also to the wolverhampton boys who helped us put the tent up at 1 in the morning and welcomed us with beer!
Finally, sorry we didn't get to meet more of you but hey, there's always next year, right?

[Bobblehat]

Hay vqdave great to see you too, could you PM me your email and I will email you the stuff about Tom.

one of the many, many best bits has to be the pool filling escapade. Robin brings a pool, but hasent got a clue how big it is or how much it holds. So Friday it gets blown up, and we find its a big one.

The next question how do you fill a pool when the nearest tap is the other side of the campsite. After half an hour of trying to scroung lengthes of hose - but in vain - tom is going up and down on his go-ped with a 5/8ltr water can and with have a small puddle. Peirre manages to scroung a dustbin wich he cleans out, we take the back seats out of a New Beetel Cabro and put dustbin in, drive to tap fill with water, repeat 6- 8 times and hey presto a cooling pool!

So to all those of you who were giving us funny looks in the 3rd field in BSJ (those who were sober enough to notice) that is what we were up to

[philsmith]

Here's my Le Mans week

Arrived Monday morning after spending the weekend at a Vintage Slotcar race in Bordeaux
Do usual stuff in the week.
Friday 10 am set off for Paris to catch a flight to Madrid.
Arrive Madrid 5pm, drink and eat for rest of evening in 42degree heat!
Saturday attend a Slotcar show in the morning and race in after noon, more drinks and eats.
Sunday up at 6am for flight back to Paris
Arrive Paris 11am, drive back to Le Mans and sitting in grandstand seat at 1pm, watch end of race.
Drive back to UK on Monday and arrive home at 7pm , 10 days after leaving!!

[president]

what a fantastic Le Mans, the T.W.A.T.S. sponsored BAM! Porsche won GT2

highlights:-
Thursday night qualifying
I was wearing  Leo Hindery's race suit lending against the pit wall watching qualifying and going anywhere I pleased
BAM! getting pole position

Friday
all a blur, was found sleeping on a bank outside camping blue

Saturday
T.W.A.T.S startline banter with everyone, soaking half the crowd with ice cold water from our infamous wheelie bin whilst standing on it. Being on the starting grid for the second year in a row and getting very close to the Hawaiian tropic girls. Shampoo bar of course.

Sunday
Watching from BAM! pit garage, again on pit wall for finish and podium, seeing our boys lifting the GT2 trophy.

PRICELESS


p.s.
Lowlight
getting breathalised Sunday morning when driving to the swimming pool, after such a big day and night I was expecting to visit the local french jail but obviously the meter was not working right becasue it recorded 0.0 on the display  

[Steve Pyro]

06:00 Wednesday - welded up split sump of one of the cobras
10:00 Wednesday - it pisses down, not too amusing in an open top car
11:00 Wednesday - Chevy pickup has a tyre blow out
15:00 Wednesday - rain stops, continue on N138
19:00 Wednesday - arrive at camp site, it pisses down.  Put tents up in the rain
22:30 Wednesday - to the Stella Bar
02:15 Thursday - kicked out of the Stella Bar

later - the SUN came out