Today was the start of the infamous, internationally-adored car race that lasts for twenty-four straight hours in my, new to me, town of Le Mans, France. There are many, many tourists in the town which is awesome so I can take pictures of everything and be less self-conscious because everyone's taking pictures of everything. Specifically, there are a lot of Dutch and British people, but also people from Germany, Denmark, and some from the USA! But mostly British people, who are very friendly to talk to! It's fun to talk to them because they are foreign, but we can still communicate with them so easily.
So the race started today at 3pm, We got to the course around 12 and bought student tickets so they were half the price of everyone else's tickets which was phenomenal. The six of us ended up sitting on the inside of the track on this hay-covered-grassy area and by 2:30, the area was mostly filled. This is mainly a mans sport, not to say that there aren't women there, but there was probably five men to every woman. Additionally, there was always a line for the men's restroom, causing guys to just pee in the trees or against walls. I guess it's a guy thing because I don't get it.
It was super awesome to see the cars! They are very, very fast so getting a good picture of a specific car (Patrick Dempsey's Porsche!! #77) took a lot of patience and timing. After just looking through my pictures, I did not get a good picture or video of him at all... But I am now very good at spotting his car! Gray and white, with a light blue hood. And while it is super cool that he is a professional race car driver, he is also competing in the slowest group of cars. So there are four different classes of cars - from Formula One to cars that could be on the street (fast cars, but still street legal). PD is competing in the slowest group. But it's cool because all four classes of cars compete at the same time for the same 24 hours, so a lot of passing of the slower cars occurs.
(Side note - Patrick Dempsey, actor famous for his role in "Grey's Anatomy" recently died on the show. Why? Because he's considering moving out to Le Mans and is currently in the process of looking at castles to buy.)
Along with the actual race, a lot of the cars have official shops and sample cars that you can look at. For example, Audi had a replica of their Formula One (I think?) car that was racing so anyone could go up and look at it. All the cars we saw had Michelin Tires. The Michelin man didn't hug us while he was walking in the parade so we're still a little upset from that, but also where's Goodyear?? Why is Akron not represented here?
Overall, the race is excellent. There is so much to do and it's actually so much fun to watch the cars go around. It's truly incredible. A lot of people don't consider car racing a sport, which is fair. And I agree, it's not an athletic sports but it's still a competition. And yes, you need to have a good driver of course, but more importantly, you need a great car! It's more of a competition between the engineers behind the car than necessarily the drivers (side note, there are three drivers per car, who each take about 40 minute shifts at a time). What they're able to build is incredible and I won't be attending any Nascar events any time soon, but I would go back to the Le Mans race.
I'm in for the night, but we're leaving tomorrow at noon to go back to watch the end of the race! I'm cheering for Porsche - I can't wait to see how it ends!
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