18 Jun 03
At five to four, the green flags are going mental, the Union Jacks are aloft (try telling the crowd it's a German victory) and everyone's feeling somewhat tired and emotional. The pit crews remove everything of value from the front of their garages in anticipation of an onslaught of spectators. The Bentleys have it, their sixth victory at Le Mans and their first since 1930. Tom Kristiansen, Rinaldo 'Dindo' Capello and Guy Smith take the top of the podium, Kristiansen for the fourth consecutive year after his wins with Audi (plus a win in 1997), Capello and Smith for the first time. Second-placed in the 'true Brit' car are Mark Blundell, Johnny Herbert and honourary Englishman, Australian-born David Brabham, just two laps behind. Herbert takes the prize for fastest lap, however, clocking one in three minutes, 35.529 seconds. Third are Emanuele Pirro, JJ Lehto and Stefan Johansson in the Champion Racing Audi, and fourth the Team Goh car of Seiji Ara, Jan Magnussen and Marco Werner. Fifth is the Panoz, sixth the Jan Lammers Dome-Judd and seventh a Courage-Judd; in a great result for the Courage team, eighth and ninth places are taken by Courage-Peugeot prototypes. Tenth-place belongs to the British-run Prodrive Ferrari 550 Maranello, also the winner of the GTS class (full results on next page).
The crowds leap to the track as the cars line up in the paddock. The looters, sorry, souvenir-hunters, are grabbing anything that's not nailed down: signs from the top of the pit garages, bits of tyre, fragments of bodywork and even the corporate flags hanging off the hospitality boxes, but it's all very good-humoured. The party atmosphere continues into the night; although around three-quarters of the spectators head straight off for their ferries that evening, many more drive into the centre of Le Mans for a meal, sitting in the pavement restaurants around the main squares for a touch of civilization before the final night under canvas. At nightfall, the remaining campers build their fires, let off their last fireworks in a tremendous, impromptu display (note to self for next year: buy plenty of rockets) and finish off the last of their booze. The ravaged fields resemble nothing so much as a post-apocalyptic landscape or shanty town, with straggling groups huddled around flopping canvas structures and local people scavenging for left-behind tents and camping equipment (one family is busily loading abandoned barbecues and folding chairs into a filthy but surprisingly new white van, their children begging for unlit bangers and cigarette lighters). The cars still look good though - there's a guy meticulously washing his immaculately-restored DeTomaso Pantera as others file out of the site behind him - and we still have a couple of bottles of very fine French red wine. We pack as much as we can by firelight, in anticipation of a 6am start back to St Malo in the morning, and plan our strategy for Le Mans 2004.
