Berry Kercheval wrote:
>
> Well, I spent Father's day watching the Le Mans coverage on speedvision: the
> new DirecTV dish was my present.
>
> There were few Brits out there, just MG (!) and Bentley (!!!). The MGs were
> very fast but retired with mechanical and electric (!) problems. One Bentley
> retired with an electric fire, but the other was consistently quick and took
> third place overall, pretty darn good considering that GTP cars have to use
> tires a full two inches narrower than the winning Audi P900 cars.
>
> I was sure proud to drive my '66 Bentley today...
You realize the Bentley cars used the same engine as the Audis? So
for all practical purposes it was another 1-2-3 for Audi.
I was at the race. My first time to go to Le Mans. Fun time except
for the rain. I felt sorry for the people camping in tents. At
least I had a warm dry place to go back to. We had 14 people packed
into a little farmhouse about 1.5 miles from the track. Cozy, but
warm & dry.
I was happy to see the Chrysler Mopar finish 4th. I was pulling for
Panoz, though. At least the rain made the race interesting.
Otherwise Audi would have run away with it. They might have taken
the top 4 spots, with Bentley 5 and 6!
The Alpine that won the Index of Thermal Efficiency in '61 ('62?) was
there as part of the vintage race, so that was cool.
One of the most-discussed topics was the priciness of the items for
sale in the Bentley pavilion. 19 pounds sterling for a t-shirt, and
an ugly shirt at that. 22 pounds for a baseball cap. 44 pounds for a
polo shirt. Cheapest thing they had was a mouse pad for 6 pounds, I
bought one for a local friend with a '61 Bentley S2. The pound is
about US$1.45. Over $63 for a polo shirt! So there wasn't as much
Bentley gear being worn by the fans as you might expect.
I'm writing a long message about my trip, I'll post it here in a day
or two.
--
T.J. Higgins
tjhiggin@ingr.com
Huntsville, AL
'67 Sunbeam Alpine V
'76 Jensen Interceptor III with Mopar power
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