Petit Le mans pics.

Great pictures!

The weekend was great. I volunteered to work at the AMLS booth in return for a weekend pass. I worked Friday morning from 8 to noon and had a lot of fun running into old friends and making many new one's. And the bonus was being able to park my 430 behind the AMLS sales trailer without any other car around. And they let me park there on Saturday too and that was worth more than the free ticket!!! Parking was a nightmare.

The crowd was bigger than I've ever seen. The economy may suck for many of us, but not for Mr. Panoz.

Road Atlanta, IMSA and AMLS did a great job all weekend. My only complaint is how did Coke allow Pepsi to "own" the track? WTF? NO Diet Coke?!!!!

Can't wait until next year!

- Bill

 

Round trip from my home in Orlando was 1035 miles. Didn't take just 10 hours though...
more like 18 hours worth of driving. But coming up from hot 'n humid Florida, the weather at RA was perfect!
I'm too beat to load some pics. Gatorrari/Jim, those pics look great! Did you see the red Mondial Cab near the Vendor Village Saturday afternoon?

KevFla

 

Great pics, thanks Jim, and it was very nice to see everyone again! Great day indeed!

 

I did see the red Mondial, did your car have 360 wheels? You drove right by me, car looks great!

 

WOW! What a great race this year! AF Corse won! So much stuff to talk about. We brought out the real tifosi gear this year, and we went touring around the track. Eventually we ended up visiting the Corse Clienti stand to take a picture in front of the F458 Italia. As we were taking the picture, this gentleman invited us to come inside because, "we had gone through all this trouble to dress up and cheer". Turns out, he was the CEO and President of Ferrari of North America, Marco Mattiacci!!!!! We had no idea at the time who he was, but what an honor! If anybody knows how to get in touch with him, please PM me, so I can thank him! Anyway, here's a few pics.
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Thanks for the pics, dude. I'm glad someone got some pics from the "grid walk".

Here are some more from turn 10. Obviously one of those was not a racing vehicle. I stayed there through the full-course yellow since I knew there'd be a bunch of passing there after they went green. I like the shot of one Gulf-sponsored Aston Martin-powered car passing another of rather different conformation! And the one of the lead Audi passing the #58 Ferrari was probably the best shot I got all weekend.

Then I moved to the other end of the bridge, where I had to shoot under a tent and between peoples' heads! And I crossed the road to take a couple of shots of the cars going down the hill from turn 11 into 12. Note the markings on the track, showing a couple of excursions off-course (including a dent in the tire wall!) and what appears to be the results of some doughnuts.....
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As I left the turn 10 area, I spotted Bill2's 430, but not Bill, so I pressed on, heading back through Vendor Village. The Corvette corral would have made Zora Arkus-Duntov quite happy, I'm sure, and the Porscheplatz had an expensive white addition.

My plan was to pay the Ferrari corral another visit, but en route, I stopped at another favorite spot of mine, along the hill heading up from turn 1 towards 2. This is a tricky spot to get good photos, because the cars are quite close and going quite fast. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see that in some shots part of the car is sharp while the rest is blurry! (Incidentally, I was shooting in shutter priority at 1/160 second, and I believe at ISO 400.) And I caught a GTC Porsche doing a bit of "agricultural" motoring, but he got back on course and kept going.

As I headed back through the main paddock, I took another shot of the Audi "plantation" and found the #20 car much the worse for wear, quite deranged and covered in fresh Georgia clay.
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WOW! Gorgeous picture of those two Gulf Aston Martins! I took a video of that 911 GT2 RS this morning at Caffeine and Octane. That's quite a car as well.

 

Bill,
I was the guy that came to relieve you for the 12-4 shift at the ALMS booth on Friday. It was a pleasure meeting you, and drooling over your car all afternoon!

-John

 

It was nice meeting you too. Thanks for watching out for my car.

Bill

 

Still editing pics but here is some video I took of the patron 458 including the glowing brakes


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfTl2C6q1nc[/ame]

 

Here are my photos from the race on Saturday

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonderf/sets/72157627680797527/

 

Great pics. Hope it is ok that I posted one here: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?p=140862633#post140862633

Let me or a mod know if not. Thanks.

 

nice video Tanner when was that incident with the Patron 458 trailing smoke? I don't recall that during the race.

the Caddy stand was pretty impressive. of the manufacturer displays, I think BMW's was the best (including free test drives if you were so inclined; I wasn't), but I also have a soft spot for the new Grand Cherokee SRT8

 

As I crossed the bridge to the outer paddock, I stopped at the far end to take a couple of the shots of the cars coming out of turn 12. I was surprised that there weren't more people taking advantage of the great spot, but then again, the entire outer paddock was largely deserted, because there wasn't a whole lot to see there.

One display that I hadn't seen before was for the new URC cars, three of which were under a tent, including one painted like a Chaparral! If those cars aren't McLaren M8Fs, they're very good copies!

I continued on to the Ferrari area, where I did see cars in the corral this time, about a dozen of them, including a nice bicolore California. (But this pales compared to the nearly four dozen cars that were in the corral in the infield a year earlier.) And, as remote as this place was, there were very few spectators, but I sense that's the way FNA wanted it. I'd say that 99% of the people at the race never saw the cars. And, with one exception, I did not recognize any of the people in the enclosure. There were a lot of FChatters who I know who were at the race (some with their cars), but they were all in the infield.

I wanted to take a shuttle bus back up the hill, so I headed over to the main entrance, but for some reason the buses weren't stopping where they were supposed to! As I trudged up the hill, I grabbed one shot looking up the front straight.
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I took advantage until a security guard yelled at me for stopping to take pics on the bridge even though no one was coming......the security at le mans was very tight this year and it was hard to find great spots to shoot pics that there werent 37982619 people around you getting the same shot

 

The nice thing about a 9+ hour race is that in many spots, people don't stay in the same spot for too long. I found that if you wait a little, you can get closer to the ideal shooting spot.

 

Anyone know how many were attending on Saturday alone?

 

I saw that bicolore Cali heading north on 85 Sunday morning; was it an FCI car, or does it belong to someone in the Carolinas?

 

they said on the PA that it was 8-10k more than last year, but never gave an absolute number.

 

I wonder why Ferrari didn't have a corral like every one else did. I wasn't going to pay $600+ for a spot in the Ferrari booth because the view is not that great from there. But I would have paid a little extra for a spot in a corral on the infield. It's disappointing. Also, no Maserati area. Crazy...

 

True! Here is one of the shots I got from the bridge
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The problem is the cost to Road Atlanta... the dealers / mfg's are the ones who pay for the corral areas... and then re sell to owners. Porsche and Corvette are the most numerous... so they get good spots because they can plan ahead.

The Ferrari crowd is ummm "less predictable" in turnout. The FNA thing was - in my opinion - way, way too much... $300 maybe, unless they were shining your car and giving massages and doing the wife's nails and washing it down with Champage... I cant see it. however I beleive the Ferrari North America / Ferrari Factory thought is that you own a Ferrari then you are willing to pay for anything at any price as long as it says Ferrari on it!

 

I think that was one of the sales guys from FoA.

 

I personally didn't mind the cost. The food was good and nice knowing that I had a good parking spot off the dirt and grass. The hat was the only thing in the gift bag but not big into free stuff anyway. The seating was nice with the TV's. I got my money worth by drinking a case of Peroni's