Le Mans 2013

I have never watched the Le Mans 24 hour race before today but about an hour ago I was flicking through the channels and there it was. Ok, I thought, lets take a look at this and see what's what. Having raced on the track within the Gran Turismo Playstation game I thought I knew what to expect. How wrong could I be? It looks absolutely terrifying at those speeds in the dark! Those drivers have to be incredibly courageous in order to compete at this level of motorsport.


Unfortunately, accidents still happen. While searching twitter for whatever information I could glean about the race I discovered that the leading driver, Allan Simonsen, crashed his Aston Martin on lap 4 and lost his life. According to the commentators, his family urged the teams to continue racing as that's what they thought he would have wanted. Much respect.


Having next to no knowledge about the sport, except that it's held in France over a 24 hour period, I'm finding the commentary to be very informative. It feels like when I started watching Formula 1 over a decade ago, desperate to learn as much as I could about the on track action. I'm pleasantly surprised that I even recognise a few names of ex-F1 drivers in the race, such as Alan McNish, Lucas Di Grasi, Kamui Kobayashi and Giancarlo Fisichella.

If my wife lets me, I may even watch an hour or two in the morning.