Jox Jottings - Tuesday

A hawkeyed member of our team just spotted that, despite what we were told, all 56 cars did not pass ‘Pesage’ with flying colours.. 21 of them have ‘technical irregularities’.. So maybe Pesage was exciting after all.

If yesterday was an eye-wateringly undramatic day.. Today has been even more so.. watching drying paint is really quite exciting compared with this. The tiny problem here is that very little is actually happened.

The nearest thing we have to a major drama is the health of our beloved leader, Le Grand Fromage, he is ‘broken’ with a brain shrivelling ‘migraine’.. which in French translates as a ‘migraine’ … our multilingual knowledge pool gets ever deeper.

Things were briefly salvaged by a few moments of pure nostalgia that revolved around the ACO’s very own Porsche 917 LH. The Porsche 917 is of course the prototype that set all sorts of records here at Le Mans.. for example in the ‘pre-chicane’ years the short tailed ‘K’ version set the distance record covering 5335,313 kms in 24 hrs and the ‘LH’ version that, when driven in testing by Jackie Oliver, a Le Mans winner in his own right, in April 1971, recorded what was at the time, the fastest lap ever timed. It was being driven by Jackie Oliver at an eye wateringly rapid 3m 13.6s (250.457 kmh/155.0 mph). One of these cars, (chassis 045) was given to the ACO by Porsche in 1972. It has been on display in the Museum for a long time and needed urgent restoration. Motul came up with the money and the work was entrusted to The Heritage Foundation.

So the car arrived here today ‘ready to run’ and the honour of driving it went to Gerard Larrousse. Gerard had won the 1971 Sebring 12 Hours in a Porsche 917, and he also won Le Mans with Henri Pescarolo Le Mans 24hrs in 1973 and 1974 but driving a Matra- Simca MS670B.

He didn’t drive it far or fast.. instead he did several runs up and down the pit straight overseen by Frédéric Néraud , the General Manager of Heritage Foundation and several other awfully important local dignitaries. Thankfully he didn’t stack it up or blow up the engine so a ‘symbolic’ ignition key will be given to Jean-Claude Plassart, President of The ACO. Not unsurprisingly Monsieur Larrousse drove the car very sensibly, taking particular care over changing gear. Apparently engines and gearboxes don’t come cheap for a 917 and they can’t be found on eBay!!

So what else is going on? Don Panoz is back here at Le Mans, he was last here racing in 2002, this time he was here to announce a brand new road car called The Panoz Abruzzi ‘Spirit of Le Mans’.. a catchy name, apparently derived from an area in Italy not far from Rome. It is also a name that sits comfortably alongside The Esperante GTR and his LMP1 Roadster. It is certainly ‘eye-catching’ like all Panoz.. if you catch our drift! It is pretty muscular bit of kit with a 6.2 litre Corvette LS9 up front pushing out a very acceptable 620 bhp through a six speed manual transaxle. Being a huge American lump of iron it has lots of ‘torques’ .. 590 ft lbs to be precise. I This a key change for the Georgia-based manufacturer, since they traditionally used Ford-based engines in its Esperante and other models. Interestingly they don’t tell us what it weighs.

With a price tag of around $500,000 it will be reassuringly expensive and right up there with other ‘supercars’. There will only be 81 cars built.. eighty one? This slightly strange number comes about because it is based on the number of Le Mans races there will have been between 1923 and 2013. 2013 presumably the launch date for the new model. To keep the price and exclusivity of each car it will be linked to a specific year. The new owners will have to be rich but in exchange they will be a pretty privileged bunch.. The cars will be delivered from the factory to the Circuit where the new owners will receive some driver instruction. Then they will be invited to Le Mans 24hrs as guests of The ACO and use the hospitality facilities in the spectacular ‘Model Sportif’ (The building that looks like the bastard child of Babylon 9 and The Starship Enterprise). Owners will also get the chance to drive a display lap around the full circuit ..they will be invited to a ‘Spirit of Le Mans’ reception as guests of The ACO, Derek Bell and Jacky Ickx. The only minor snag we can see is that nobody knows quite how the cars will perform but we do know it might cost around $500,000!

We had a very interesting chat with the nice man from Kangaroo TV .. We threatened him with physical violence and amazingly he was concerned about his health and well being and he has leant us a Kangaroo to play with. (Not a real one .. silly..a TV!)
So we will be able to let you know how this impressive bit of kit works. At first glance, staring at a blank screen (it has not gone live yet) it looks like it could be €55 well spent. Watch this space!

Here is a video of Jock having fun on Tuesday afternoon behind the house where we are staying. Our host has a new toy and we got to play with it.