Fully Furled

See that rolled up flag? That is a Japanese flag, the chap holding it came into the stand an hour or so before the race, gave it a little wave (and got a massive cheer from everyone) then respectfully rolled it up and waited for the end of the race.

We all wanted Toyota to win. Porsche had it last year (their 17th win) , Audi have won it 12 times this century, Toyota have never won. They have finished second several times and they have been in a position to win a couple of times only to have accidents or failures.

This year the race was really between Porsche and Toyota, Porsche had ever so slightly more speed (in some conditions) but Toyota had better strategy and a couple of great stints from their driver Anthony Davidson got their no 5 car into the lead... All morning it was really close. Just imagine for a moment that you give two sets of engineers on opposite sides of the world a brief to build a car within certain guidelines. They build them, race them for 17 hours around an 8 mile track in daylight, darkness, rain, sunshine, with three drivers each, all having to stop for tyres, fuel and all amongst 60 other cars who are racing each other.. Imagine all that and then appreciate that they are only 8 seconds apart after 17 hours... It is amazing.

Anyway Toyota was in the lead, clock ticking down, Porsche had backed off going for a nice photo finish with their cars together when at 14:57 with 3 minutes left the Toyota car had an issue, and limped round the circuit. It stopped on the pit straight after being passed by the Porsche. Everyone was silent... The man in our stand slowly rolled his flag and sat down....

They got it going again and it went to complete it's final lap, as it came past the stands everyone was on their feet cheering, a bigger cheer than the winners got.

This was all bad but what was worse was that due to a rule saying that every car must cross the line within 6 minutes of the winner (a feat the Toyota failed to manage) it got disqualified..

How utterly deflating. The pictures from the Toyota garage showed utter dismay but to their credit they went over to Porsche and congratulated them. Porsche and Audi also were very respectful, muting their celebrations.

We were all feeling pretty miserable after that so headed back to the camp, packed up and drove back to the tunnel. That was entertaining as we now have a very interesting route just off the beaten track that avoids a lot of the motorway and uses great roads. With the threat of a lot of police about we were all very sensible but we still managed to get to the tunnel in just over 4 hours.

Home just after 1:30am zzzzz