R&T AT LE MANS CLASSIC
At the beginning of July, we packed up the Porsche 955 and headed for France. Four days at Le Mans Classic, courtesy of our friends at Team Langoustine.
We were invited to shoot the event and document the weekend for the team. Which, as excuses to spend four days surrounded by some of the best cars in the world go, was a fairly good one.
We made the journey down in the 955, loaded with camera gear, camping kit and probably more than two people needed for four days. Despite being a 21 year old Porsche pointed towards France in the middle of summer, it didn't miss a beat.
A good start. (Aside from a broken air-con unit.)
LIFE AT TERTRE ROUGE
Staying with Team Langoustine means home for the weekend is Tertre Rouge, right inside the circuit. Team Langoustine have made it their base at Le Mans 24hr and The Classic for years and were good enough to have us along for this one.
It's a different experience to arriving each morning as a spectator. Staying with the team meant you're living amongst it, eating with the crew, spending time around the cars, documenting whatever's happening around you.
Le Mans Classic doesn't really have an off switch and has a noise to it that never really stops. Day or night, there was always an engine somewhere, always a conversation happening, always a reason to not be in your tent yet.
THROUGH THE LENS
We'd gone out there with a job to do.
The brief was to capture the wider Team Langoustine experience, not just what was happening on track. That meant the racing, the hospitality, the campground, pit walks, the people and all the smaller moments in between. Which, for us, is generally the interesting bit anyway.
There was no shortage of things to point the camera at.
When we weren't working, we had time to actually enjoy being there. Excellent food, plenty of coffee, some very late nights and the sort of people you only seem to meet when you've put thousands of car enthusiasts in one place for a weekend.
FOUR DAYS LATER
By the end of the weekend we were hot, tired and fairly reluctant to leave.
Le Mans Classic had been on the list for a long time. Getting to experience it for the first time from inside the Team Langoustine camp (while also being there to document it) made the first trip a particularly good one.
Then it was time to load everything back into the 955, point it towards home and find out whether the 21 year old Porsche could manage the return journey as uneventfully as the first.
Thankfully, it did.
We'd go back tomorrow.