Another story, same outcome... As I guess I’ve
gotta cut down upon my scribblins lengthege, eh? (Which I DON’T think I’ve managed
to do so far...) As Gee Wally! Or is it “Symone,” Justin or whoever? Lookie
‘Dar - another story late to thee party, as the traditional signaling of the
summer's ray's decreasing once again lurks upon the horizon...
2011 Thought Bubbles
I began watching my taped coverage of last
year’s; Err two years ago, or is it three? Guess time really does FLY when
you’re having fun, eh? ‘Twenty-eleven 24 Heurs du Mans after the Vancouver
Canuks had gone down 3-0 on a short-handed goal by those devious Boston Bruins
during the first Power-play for the ‘KuhNucks with just a few ‘My-nutes
remaining in the second period of Game-6, or was it Game-7?
Thus upon giving up on duh ‘KuhNucks in
disgust, I began watching the 30mins Pre-race banter on SPEED which along with
other quips saw Justin Bell talking to whom I affectionaly call “Symone
Pagenoe” (Simon Pagenaud) who claimed that he hadn’t been going for outright
speed during Qualifying; Huh? As ‘Symone had qualified P3 behind the front row
being locked-out by the Audi R18 TDi Panzerwagon’s; Ja Volt! As apparently Simon
was being the master of understatement.
But I found it funny to hear Justin note how
a whole Grandstand was chanting ‘C-Monn for the French Racing Star; as it was
quite amusing that they didn’t talk to ley Ham-burgle-leur, nee LeMans, France
Homeboy Sebastain Bourdais, and also known Stateside as ‘SeaBass... Oh Whale,
guess he’s not Top Banana at Peugeot, eh?
As they (SPEED) also interviewed the very
amusing ‘NickM, aka Nicolas
Minassian; DAMN! It’s hard to believe it was so many
years ago when he was the Cheepster’s Punching Bag as a rookie IndyCar Piloto,
eh? As in does anybody remember when he ran the Indy 500 in Twenty-oh-One as
part of ‘Cheep’s replacement package Dealio for letting ‘MAC MONTOYA (Juan
Pablo) go Across-the-Pond to Sir Frank’s Team Willie outfit. As in Minassian was Bruno
Junqueira’s Wingman at TCGR after Junqueira bested the Frenchman for the F3000
International title in 2000.
But the pair of rookie Indy Racing League
piloto’s were hard pressed to defend Montoya’s win for Chip Ganassi, as Minassian got dumped
in favour of Memo Gidley after a rather disappointing month ‘O May. (When it
actually was a whole month vs. one week...)
As obviously I’m hard pressed to remember
much about the race upon scribblin' these final thoughts some two years later;
or is it three? (As this story's sat dormant so long that A-L-L of
the Speed.com internets links have done gone
away with the advent of the TV Channel and now the website NO longer existing!)
 |
| Japan's only winning Le Mans racecar, the Mazda 787B. (Image source: mazdainthenews.com) |
Although I seem to recall that “Doctor
McDreamy,” nee Gray’s Anatomy super hunk Patrick Dempsey had the privilege of
taking the Mazda 787B 4-rotor prototype beast around the 8.5-mile legendary
circuit for some celebratory laps on Thursday prior to the race in honour of it
being Mazda’s twentieth anniversary of winning Le Mans with Johnny Herbert, Volker Weidler and Bertrand Gachot at the keyboard... While
Herbert also took his old steed for a
trip down memory lane at Le
Mans, as Mazda is still the only Japanese manufacturer
to win the race...
As it was this
race where I’d caught Justin Bell’s hilarious “Crowd Crawl” antics and
subsequent humour from the Speed Geeks ‘bout it being Monsieur Bell’s final
race before he went off into the
wilderness to write books that got me to corral Justin into doing an interview
for this blog.
Yet I do recall rootin’ mightily for Symone
to pull off the upset victory for Peugeot - as the Frenchman teamed with le
‘Hamburgular and Pedro Lamy chased down
the lone surviving Audi TDi R18 No. 2 racecar of Benoit Treluyer, Marcel
Fasller and Andre Lotterer - finishing a miniscule 13.8-seconds adrift of Lotterer
for the fourth closest finish ever.
And remember that thee Scottish Terrier, aka
Alan McNish had a horrific shunt in the races first hour whilst trying to over
take a GTE Ferrari 458 Italia, before
the second Audi with “Rocky” (Mike Rockenfeller) behind the wheel suffered a
frightingly horrible looking nighttime shunt - he too getting caught out by a
slower Ferrari 458 which left Audi with just the lone relatively untested trio
of Treluyer, Fasller and Lotterer
to hold off the might of the Peugeot Sport factory triumberant for the
remaining two-thirds of the race...
Obviously I wanted Pagenaud to win since I’m
such a HUGE fan ‘O his! Ever since he kicked ARSE in the American Le Mans
Series after his short lived Champ Car career... Although I cannot say that I
was pulling quite as much for Bourdais, whilst Lamy’s claim-to-fame? Is
breaking both of his legs during a practice shunt at Silverstone for the long
departed Benetton F1 Team; YIKES!
, Audi’s win was the first from Pole-position
since 2003, when “Mr. Le Mans,”
(Tom Kristensen) took his Audi derived Bentley Speed-8 (assisted by Reinhold
Joest) with co-drivers Dindo Capello and Guy Smith to the podium's top-step, as
it was Benoit Treluyer capturing Pole position this year.
And I
was also extremely happy for the little team that did in the GTE-Am (Amateur)
category of the French classic, as it was none other then Robertson Racing with
its Ford GTR, paying homage to those iconic Ford GT-40’s of yesteryear... As
not only did David & Andrea Robertson celebrate their wedding anniversary
on the podium at Circuit de la Sarthe, they also made history by becoming the
very first husband-wife duo to do so.
And making further history was the fact
that Leena Gade became the very first ever female
Race-engineer to win at Le Mans,
which I didn’t discover until the following year.
Meanwhile Chevrolet celebrated its 100th
birthday in fine fashion with its iconic Corvette's sweeping top honours in
both of the GT classes...
To
continue reading, see; LE MANS: 24 Heurs later - the Clockstrikes Midnight upon Toyota’sreturn...