The Little Le Mans

I wrote my last Peninsula Pen entry last Wednesday from Atlanta, on the way to Road Atlanta for the tenth annual Petit Le Mans. Already a classic, “Petit” is a race of ten hours or 1,000 miles run with the same cars and rules of the great 24 Hours of Le Mans (in my opinion, the world’s greatest motor sport event). That was the fortieth Pen – I hadn’t missed an entry since launching this blog – but I warned the trip might cause a miss or two. It did. There’s much to tell – too much to try in this missive. If you want to know what the race was like, you can head over to The Last Turn Clubhouse, where I write about such things. Later this week, my friend Murphy the Bear will also weigh in on the race, trip, friends, and stories.

We hoped that two kids would join us, son Ashley from Columbia SC, and daughter Courtney from Chapel Hill, NC. Unfortunately a weekend work schedule kept Ash away. We were disappointed, but of course very happy to see Courtney for the first time since Christmas 2005.
She seemed to really enjoy it all, found it much more exciting than Mosport, where she and husband Dave were only able to be on hand for practice and qualifying due to other obligations – something about an anniversary visit to Niagara Falls. We did the grid walk, such a swarm of people this time that is was sometimes nearly impossible to get near the cars. From there we headed down into turn one for the start...fast, clean, exciting. From there we were off on a tour of the track in our golf cart. The traffic around the facility was horrific – that’s good, indicating a huge crowd, announced later was over 100,000. We had lunch with Fred and Leonard in the turn 10 woods. Later we spent time with Tom, Barry, Brett, Mike, Janos, Martin and many, many more friends, new and old.

We watched into the dark in the terraced seating above 10B. The flashing lights, flaming exhausts and glowing brakes in the night are a special experience unique to this kind of racing. Some long-time fans who had seen many races, but not one into the night were mightily impressed.

We met Courtney on Friday night at Paddy’s, the Chateau Elan Irish pub that’s our favorite PLM watering hole. Paddy served us Shepard's Pie, Jameson Salmon, Jameson Bread Pudding, and and Chocolate Mouse. After the race it was off to Jeffery’s for football on TV. Albert the Alligator was there with Murphy. Poor Albert saw his beloved Gators drop their second of the season to the Tigers.

On Sunday we said farewell to Courtney over lunch at Café Élan in the chateau’s winery, over great soups – lentil and French onion. Here’s hoping it isn’t again nearly two years.

More to come. Check back for photos and more about our trip to Petit Le Mans.