Le Mans Road Trip

So Neevesy pops round Friday evening to start our road trip on our GSXR750s to Le Man for the Motogp. Down to Folkestone, a mile into our journey a Pheasant jumps out and gets mowed over as Neavesy flies by me pulling a wheelie. We jump on the train in the morning, arrived at 1.30 and soaked up the atmosphere of the paddock, managed to grab a scooter from Monster and rolled out to watch qualifying.

Randy Mamola comes out with us and talks us through a few things like the traction control, how it all works and sounds on the different bikes, really interesting and I’m now an expert in traction control. Randy tells us to go back four turns where they practice their starts and it was mega to see them all lined up and be so close to it all.

Then grabbed dinner and kicked back for an early start, arrived at the circuit at 8 just as the paddock was waking up and getting ready for the race, with the sound of bikes warming up in the background. I didn’t have a burning desire to go Le Mans, always thought it was more about the 24 hour, but it was actually one of my favourites, had a fucking awesome time, loved every second of it. Racing was ferocious, lots of off-track banter, had a mega time as we watched the race unfold from the service road.

Pretty much got on our toes right at the end of the race, loads of traffic but we were pretty brutal as we made our way out, we got ourselves up out of Le Mans and onto the motorway pretty fast. I tell you, Neevesy has a compass built into his head ‘cos he knew where he was going, man he was like a homing pigeon.

Had to stop for fuel and there must have been 500 bikes in line, so two hour delay, but made up for it by getting a move on to Calais, latched onto three French bikers along the way and rode with them hard for about 70 miles, and we felt like we’d really made up some time.

Got to Calais and Neevesy pulls up, turns around with a look which I knew wasn’t good straight away; that look means ‘we’re fucked’ and we were, because they’d shut the tunnel for maintenance until 2 in the morning which meant us waiting around for 4 hours sitting in the café. But we had a laugh with a few of the other lads there from Le Mans, Stefan Capella was there, Gino Rea and their crew, and we made the best of a bad thing.

Got on the train, fell asleep, landed in England and headed down the M20, parting company with Neevesy who had a different mission on. Halfway down and the M20 was shut, got diverted and got home at twenty to five in the morning. But great road trip, great company, racing was awesome, in and out, great way to spend the weekend, I buzzed off it, was awesome.

Flinty