It must be said that I love the 24 hour bike race which is help at the Paul Ricard circuit in the south of France every September. I first attended from the UK with some mates from college (Robbo, Pete, John, Dave, Karen and various others) in 1980 and I have been going back as often as possible, until today.
I have visited each year for the last eight years and the journey from where I live in Italy is about 1200 kilometres each way, whereas from the UK Midlands the distance is over 1400 each way plus of course the English Channel, so the journey is longer. When we first rode down we had of course no smartphone, no GPS, no credit cards (no brains for sure) and we carried tents and sleeping bags so if it rained we just got soaked!
For the last 4 years or so I have been invited by Manfred (Mandy) Kainz who is the owner and General Manager of YART, the current World Endurance Champions, so I saddled up my trusty FJR1300 and left Amalfi on the Wednesday morning, stopped for the night in Massa and arrived in my Ibis hotel in Toulon on Thursday afternoon, I stayed there last year and loved it.
WHAT a wonderful race weekend with great weather too! On Friday I went to collect the 2 VIP tickets that Manfred had left for me at the lovely F1 hotel at the track and I went to the pits to thank him, Saturday I went to watch the start at 1500 and stayed for a couple of hours to see the race progress and then on Sunday I went to see the final few hours of the race and Manfred invited me into the YART pits and told me all about the weekend, it was a great experience to see things from the inside, so to speak.
The YART Yamaha R1 finished third in the race behind the works BMW and SERT Suzuki and thus second in the Championship, only a few points benind the official factory BMW team.
Wow, a fantastic race weekend for sure and thanks Manfred!!
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