Friday, June 12 - Le Mans

Bonjoir. It's noon on Friday and it's the first time I've had a few minutes to myself since getting off the plane in Paris last Sunday morning. I'm sitting amongst the souvenir tents writing on my iPhone.

Practice on Wednesday evening was from 6 to midnight - 6 hours straight, all but one lap of which was run in the rain. Not the ideal conditions for our drivers to learn an 8 mile track. You would think 6 hours would be lots, but that adds up to less than 25 laps for each of the 3 drivers.

Qualifying was last night from 7 to 9 and 10 to midnight. Each driver needs to qualify here, within 115% of the fastest car in the class, and that's not an easy thing to do at this big and fast track. While our drivers did do that, they barely did it. To be fair it's a lot to learn in 35 laps or so of total time on the track.

Le Mans is bigger than Indy - bigger track, as many spectators (now that Indy is not what it once was), and internationally known. While they do some things very well, they could sure use a lesson in how to get traffic in and out of the circuit. What a zoo! Fortunately I have my GPS to help find some back roads in from our chateau. When I had an Australian woman's voice programmed to give verbal directions, I called her Shiela. When I changed to a British accented woman, I called her Liz. Now I have an American woman's accent, and I call her June Cleaver ("Those were lovely directions you gave me, Mrs. Cleaver", I tell her)

Having Patrick Dempsey as a driver is crazy. He's a bigger star in Europe than in North America, I'm told. From what I've seen I believe it. At the tech inspection and media event in downtown Le Mans on Tuesday it got scary. The crowd began pushing to get to Patrick and people began falling... When he was leaving, we got him, Joe and Don (drivers) into a van and people were banging on the side of it and screaming while it drove through the crowd. It reminded me of a scene of the Beatles being moved around.

At the end of the parade through Le Mans tonight I've been designated to drive the non-descript car up a side street and have him jump in the back. We're doing that about half a block before the end. Then I get to do some of the most important driving of my life! And they actually have French undercover police walking along the parade route near him at all times. I guess they don't want a repeat of the incident at the French Open last week, where that crazy guy ran out onto the court trying to attack Federer.

On another note, I was driving Donna and Sienna (Don's wife and daighter) into the track yesterday afternoon. We had to drive through all the drunken spectators, tents, and other riffraff. It's quite a sight to see - as wild and crazy as anything I've ever seen at a race track. Maybe worse than Indy or Sebring even. And there must be 200,000 people here already. On Wednesday night, in the rain, there were more people in the grandstands than a sports car race in the US has for race day.

As we drove along through the crowd, there were 2 guys on those push- type scooters with a very small motor on the back wheel. They where scooting along the road in front of us and 100,000 of their closest friends... Wearing only a speedo. Nothing else. And one of them had pulled the back of his speedo down to share his butt with the world. All of this was quite entertaining, but it got better. As the bare butt one got up to max speed - about 25 mph - he started a tank slapper, wobbled for about 5 seconds, and then went down. Full force into the pavement. Can you picture where he got road rash? Just about everywhere. But, I guess one good thing about drinking massive amounts of alcohol before riding a scooter near-naked is the pain-killing effect. Within seconds bare-butt scooter man was back up and scooting again. Of course, the crowd loved it. 9 year old Sienna, in the backseat, had a very curious look on her face.

One of the interesting people I've gotten to know well on this trip is Michael Matisse. He lives in Seattle and is a very high level photographer. He just spent 3 months doing a million dollar photo shoot for fashion designer Donna Karan. He's here with our team documenting the experience. His photos are amazing. He's not taking many car shots - just people stuff. Very cool. Oh, and he's the grandson of French painter Henri Matisse, so he's spent a lot of time here in France and has some interesting stories. And knows his art.

Okay, time to go eat and get my briefing on the parade escape plan.

Speaking of food, though, I made a note of something last night during qualifying that I'd never experienced in racing before. I was watching the telemetry, talking on the radio, and watching the sector times on the monitor in the garage while the drivers were on track. Like most European tracks the garage is right on pit lane. So we're essentially in pit lane. And this being an Italian team, dinner was served in the garage during qualifying.

As I ate Caprese salad, penne bolenese, and tiramisu I thought about how many cheese burgers and fries I'd eaten in pit lane...

Gotta go. Au revoir. Ciao. Grazie. Merci.

Ross