Jox Jottings

Friday June 11th 2004 09:53:09am

Here we go, it is that time of year again, the British have failed to impress in most of the major tennis tournaments, and our performance in other major sporting events has not been much better and Euro 2004 (some series of local football matches apparently) is moving into overdrive. To be fair the cricket has gone well for the Brits, after all we invented the game.. But there are 37 drivers from the UK in the race this year.

At a glance you could be mistaken if you thought UK was empty at moment because much of the population seems to be here at Le Mans. Certainly every Lotus Seven Caterham and other clones are here along with one of virtually everything slightly sporty that was built in the UK over the last few decades. An added bonus on the journey down was steady stream of Second World War ordnance chugging home after the D-Day commemorations. Some were under their own steam, others on trailers behind trucks, not as dangerous as back in 1944, but then again not quite as realistic.

One favourite occupation at Le Mans is sitting in bars and cafes looking at cars… yes .. it is a bit sad, but true. Top of the pile so far have been a Ferrari F40 and a couple of the latest Aston Martins…. lower down the pecking order, but really quite practical, is an ageing Ford Granada stretched limo (ex funeral fleet?) that has been repainted (probably by hand) to look like the Racing For Holland Dome. Probably the least successful ‘conversion’ to date is a bizarre motor home that proudly boasts a home made body bolted onto the front end of a 5 series BMW. We wonder why only one of these seems to have been built. Mind you it did sound a bit naughty, maybe a blown exhausts, but fruity. You need to see it and then you can draw your own conclusions.

The camp sites are filling up; determined campers are stoically hammering tent pegs into the rock hard ground in between resting for the odd glass of beer or two .. or three. The water supply and loo paper are holding out pretty well and the electricity is only fairly unpredictable. Having invested in a new radio it seems that Radio Le Mans is now a little further down the dial than usual and has less of a ‘hair trigger’ if you happen to nudge the pocket radio. Today is Friday and things feel a bit less exuberant than in previous years, maybe it is the hot, muggy conditions but no doubt it will get more rowdy as time goes on.

What of the motor racing? After all that is why at least some of us are here. Most people, your scribe included, sort of assumed that this would be another Audi benefit. Four Audis driven by eight drivers that have all won Le Mans in the past might prove a bit of a challenge to the rest of the grid. The various Audi teams can now concentrate on winning again after the distractions of Bentley years.

In LMP1 you could sense the drama when David Brabham put the Zytek onto pole ahead of all the Audis. You get the feeling that this caught the Audi fleet by surprise, between them they have no less than eight Le Mans winners driving for them and they surely didn’t expect the Zytek to spoil the symmetry. The answer was to send Herbert out and get him to ‘sort it’ …. and at the end of the early session he did just that. Then in the late session Michelin were rumoured to have come up with a set of very special tyres just for #88 Audi and Herbert went out again to put some fresh air between the Audi and Zytek. Next up was the #8 car, that did the same and gradually the Zytek slipped back down the grid. The status quo was restored and Audi breathed more easily. Back down the field we have a couple of F1 refugees, Messrs Firman and Wilson, who both state that despite being delighted to racing here at Le Mans and despite being with great teams and despite, despite, despite etc, etc they still publicly state they would much rather be in F1. Come on guys, you have a drive in the most prestigious race in the World so why not make the most of it.

LMP2 is a bit of a mess at the moment with only six cars in the class and teams not entirely ‘at one’ with the new regulations. We have three Courage, a WR and a Lola Judd and they were all pretty well scattered around the middle of the grid. The fastest #37 was 22nd overall and the slowest #24 was 30th. It will take some doing to turn this into a nerve tingling, drama packed, cliché ridden race.
The GTS battle on the other hand looks particularly tasty; we have top teams, top drivers, big budgets and delicious cars. OK so your scribe is a bit biased towards race cars that look like their road going brothers. Having said that to the Europeans the Ferraris are tasty and the Corvettes .. well .. they are Corvettes. Some ex rally World rally Champion has sneaked into the Prodrive Ferrari 550, his name is Colin McRae and he has impressed everybody by being right on the pace in his first visit to Le Mans. Until Tomas Enge blitzed class pole Colin had been the quickest pilot in the Ferrari battle. So maybe the rally world will have to manage without him in future. The Corvettes had a very good preliminary qualifying and for a while they looked stronger than the Ferraris. The problem was that nobody thought to tell Tomas Enge and he went out in the #66 Ferrari took pole and that was that .. there was no time for the ‘Vettes to respond.

LMGT is as usual riddled with Porsche 911 GT3 RS and RSR. There are a couple of Ferrari 360 Modenas and then of course the reason many of the British fans are here, cars from the beleaguered British Sports car manufacturers. They are represented by TVR x 2 and Morgan x 1. The #90 White Lightening Porsche is on pole and the #70 Ferrari next to it. Ferrari have shed their reputation for being fast and fragile, they are now simply fast. However Porsches do have that air of indestructibility about them that means that most of them will probably see the chequered flag.

Today is Friday, spectators and teams are regrouping (to be more accurate the spectators are wandering about, drinking and eating). The weather forecast is mostly sunny with highs of 23 degrees and lows of 10 degrees. It is also rather muggy and stuffy. Tomorrow is the day .. watch this space.