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In 2008 TeamTritech made its 14th pilgrimage and we had a couple of firsts: James made the first ever TeamTritech run to Le Mans on a motorbike and Nobby made his first ever appearance at Le Mans. Both of their drinking skills assisted the beer wall admirably. In the end six of us made the trip in two cars and one motorbike to camp at Maison Blanche and of course taking the pink bucket beer cooler with us accompanied by our theme tune the Pink Bucket Reggae Song sung by the Kevin the Gerbil and Roland Rat. Our team this year was relatively in-experienced. Excluding Graham's 12 previous visits the rest mustered just 10 visits and included one virgin.
The car was loaded on Tuesday night then adorned with a GD badge, the first seen for over ten years. The badge, car and advance party of Graham, Mark H and Mark S arrived on Wednesday morning to an almost deserted campsite. Our combined pitch size of 70 square metres looked very small but we pitched out tents and awaited the arrival of Peter and Chris Kerswell. With further juggling we just about fitted although we did take a small amount of next doors camp. We did however find space for the larder (thanks Rishi!) and found room for James's bike in front of the ZT-T. This meant that that car stayed on camp and never strayed into Mad Friday, a blessing in disguse. We spent Mad Friday instead having a meal on the main Arnage drag. The replica ghostbuster car was excellent.
As for the racing we went to Arnage for Wednesday qualifying, watched the start from the grandstand and the finish up at the Dunlop Curves. Quite a jog from there to get to the post race trophy presentations but we made it. In the end another win for Audi with the R10 TDi if somewhat unexpected because the Peugeots were definitely quicker in the dry. It was the rain that did it for them when they had no real pace. Also going well was the Aston Martin beating the much better funded Corvettes and, of course, Ris(h)i Competizione with their Ferrari F430 which led home four other Ferraris in GT2 with Porsches no where to be seen, although the Porsche RS Spyders did finish first and second in LMP2 and did finish ahead of the GT1 cars, something which an LMP2 car has not done before.
Rather strangely the atmosphere was best this year on Sunday night, perhaps Mad Friday is going to be replaced by Sloshed Sunday. We nearly had a disaster when, having previously had a crate of beer stolen, we nearly ran out completely. Luckily the neighbours had some spare and we replenished out stocks for a few Euros. Problem was we had to repeat the purchase later in the evening, a move James will never forget (or should that be remember). Click here for pictures from the trip.
