LE MANS TRACK DAY

11/04/10

We set off on Friday morning with the forecast for the weekend being blue skies and sunshine with temperatures around 15 degrees. Once on the other side, courtesy of tunnel sous la manche, we took a leisurely (!!!!) drive to Gacé - a pretty French village just over an hour from Le Mans. I was last here four years ago on my way to the legendary 24 hours race. On that occasion the square was filled with Ferraris, Bentleys, Mercedes and GT40s. Sadly not the case this time but not a bad place for a croque monsieur and a café au lait all the same.

The hotel we had booked was on the edge of the Mulsanne straight and was replete with vintage black and white photos from classic racing on the surrounding roads.

At the circuit the following day there was an eclectic range of hot hatches and M3s, but the undoubted star of the show was a black Porsche Carrera GT – worth around £250,000 and pushing out north of 600 bhp. The event was an open pit lane so we had up to seven hours to do as many laps as we wanted. The Type-R proved to be great fun around the circuit and, with some tuition from Paul, I really felt that I exploited all of its grip and power - something you can rarely do on public roads. ??After a brilliantly exhausting day we decided to go in to Le Mans for some food and a few beers. Congratulations to the French taxi driver for his slalom techniques en route from the hotel to the centre ville - think he could have showed us all up in his VW Touran around the track! The old part of Le Mans is very picturesque and I only wished that we had more time to explore it, certainly well worth a visit another time…??After breakfast in a skateboard park on Sunday morning (good graffiti backdrops for the cars!) we followed the evocative N138 in the direction of Rouen. Après dejeuner (well a McDonald’s!) the autoroute beckoned for the final push to Calais. Although we covered over 700 miles, the weekend was relaxing and great fun. Thanks to Al, MWB, Iain & PR for a great time. The selection of pictures show a variety of the cars on show at Saturday’s Le Mans track day.