The City of Le Mans is stunning with a beautifully preserved old town full of bars and eating houses. Our Hotel LePrince was also a great discovery inside a renovated area of the town with several bars and attractions as well as an art exhibition and a wellness spa attached to the hotel. And the Le Mans race track is wonderful and the event was organized FANTASTICALLY well by the French, simply everything worked 100%.
(If only the weather had been a bit kinder but hey, you cannot win em all eh??)
As planned Brian the Barnes arrived at the hotel at about 1140 on Saturday morning, he was cold and wet following heavy rain in the UK and in France so he was totally ready for a beer or 3!! We had our traditional can when he arrived and then he started to recover as he removed his waterproofs and boots and stuff which we hung on the warm radiator in the bathroom. Then the beer flow really started as you can imagine.
The weather on Saturday was awful very cold and wet so we took an official race decision to er stay home and watch the race live on TV!!! PERFECT. A really good decision we both agreed. Out for dinner in the old town and a long walk around the city were next given that the rain had finally stopped, then back to continue the race. How these guys can race all night is totally amazing. They have three riders to each bike and each session is about an hour.
Sunday morning we were up early and when we saw that the weather was good we were raring to go so we took Brian’s bike and rode to the track, parked the bike and headed in. Lovely circuit, MANY spectators and brilliant traffic organisation and parking spaces for bikes, totally civilised. We walked round and visited the paddock with our VIP passes then one hour before the finish we rushed “home” to see the finish on TV and thus understand the race order. The YART Yamaha R1 in second was catching the FCC Honda and indeed finished only 2 laps behind after 700 odd laps and 24 hours!!!! SUCH a shame that they had an early off and thus lost many laps making repairs.
Wonderful weekend eh Brian mate???? A few pics follow.
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