Photos - Petit Le Mans, Saturday:

Awesome pictures, Jim.....thanks for sharing.....moto graci.
Ciao,
George

 

Nice, I wish was there in person but its a bit far and also a bit expensive. Also seems like a lot of people came out and seems a bit crowded.

 

Thanks for the photos Jim.

 

i'm glad you showed up Jim, I didn't see but only 3 Ferraris all weekend. Was very disappointed. My pics will be up soon.

 

I thought this year's Petit was great except it seemed a little less exciting than it has in the past. I am not sure why but it just seemed the energy level was a little lower.

But it was great seeing the Flying Lizard cars and the Risi Ferrari team trade positions but I think my favorite cars overall was the Krohn Racing Ferrari - that color was EXTREMELY hard to photograph!

I will post my pictures later today. I have a couple of really good shots but seriously, maybe 10 of my pictures were completely ruined by IMSA photographers walking right into my shots!!!

 

I really can't agree that this year's race wasn't as exciting as past years'. Somehow, no one is talking about the legendary drive Allan McNish had that in my opinion will plant him squarely in the handful of endurance racing greats. From the time he caught the #2 Audi to the time he passed Christian Klein was THE most frighteningly awesome driving I have ever seen in my life. I guess it was unfortunate that LMP2 only had a couple cars on the lead lap, GT1 is a non-event, and GT2 wasn't the battle I was hoping for...but still, the privelage of witnessing McNish pull off what he did was well-worth the entry price to me.

 

Mac,

I didn't mean to say that the event wasn't exciting racing - just the atmosphere didn't seem as exciting as years before. I just didn't see the crazy fans or as many exotics and vendor village seemed to dead - except for the Patron tent!

But here are my picture.

I really liked the Krohn Ferrari but had a hard time getting the color right on the car! Test 1 and Test 2 show how the color would change from one picture to the next!

The Ford GTs looked amazing this weekend - almost shark like. The blue and green looked great going through the Esses, front and rear. And the silver GT looked amazing down the back straight!


The P1 and P2 cars were great - except that I kept calling them LMP1-P2 both days. Here is the RS Spyder going down the back straight and the Audi approaching turn two. This is the best shot I could get of the McNish car when it came in to get repaired. These are some shots of some of the cars with red rotors: the Panasonic P2 car, and the bright yellow No. 12. I was very happy to see the rotors during the day time because capturing the rotors at night is hard hard hard!

The Flying Lizards were really flying around the track and I think all three of them went off the track several times! This is at turn two.

As for the normal cars - I like the new Mazda 6 (but I think a lot of it is the paint job, but the wheels are awesome!) and the new Porsche 911 coupe and convertible. One of my favorite cars is a 993 Turbo in brown! One day I will own this car!!!


But there you have it, I have a ton more but a lot of them are the same.

*Side note - yes, I know that the Krohn Ferrari/Blue GT pictures are smaller than all the others. It is a problem with photobucket so if you want a larger file, I can send you one because I don't want to rename and reload the pictures!

 

Joe,

Apologies for taking your comment the wrong way. Along with what you were saying, I definitely felt that the turnout for the various corrals was pretty poor. Of course the Porscheplatz and Corvette corral are always full, but the F-car turnout was lacking at best. I can remember years not long ago where there would be twenty-thirty Ferraris; two years ago the Ferrari of Atlanta owner even brought his 288 GTO, F40, F50, and Enzo. Maybe you guys could explain to me why people aren't bringing out their babies anymore. That used to be one of the highlights for me.

 

Probably because there was no Ferrari Corral! I had my car there Thurs and Fri. Sat went in Rick's SUV.

 

I think the basic reason for no Ferrari Corral is that Ferrari North America is not picking up a part of the bill... and the only reason there was a large turn out before is that Ferrari of Atlanta paid for all the tickets and hospitality... The awful truth is that a lot of current ( new car owners ) dont really care much about racing... and I guess if I owned a $250K car I would be some what concerned about parking it next to an old Honda... ( I personally had my 328 there and parked it anywhere I found a spot... but it aint worth $250K... )

so I think Ferrari have separated themselves from Porsche and other marques by costing so much... truth be told if you can afford a new Ferrari, you probabbly can chopper in and out of the race if you want...

Road Atlanta wants a lot of money for a corral, and if you want a tent its double... and they want the cash up front... with the FCA and FChat folks kinda notorious for saying they will show, and then last min.. blowing the event off... I can see why nobody wanted to front the money.

Otherwise how about a great race... 9 hours and it came down to the last 1/2 hour!

P.S. Here are some pics I took from the race...
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Oh Yea... here are some more favorite pics.....
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One more ... How about that swamp Frog... it was out early in the race!
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Here are a few more pics of the race. Vinny and I were amazed to find the drivers catching up on some sleep before the 10 hr race.
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Awesome pics Jim! We saw those planes several times during the weekend and wondered if it was part of the show (and just bad planning) or if they were just a private group just flying around.

Tom, how did you get so close to the cars? Were you zoomed in that far or just crop the pictures? (steady hand either way!!!)


Here are my pictures that I talked about where the IMSA photographs were blocking my shots!

Porsche RS Spyder

Silver Ford GT 1 and 2

Krohn Ferrari

 

A little bit of both... mostly zoomed in... I was using my Nikon digital cam... cool Pics... if you can beleive it... its only the size of a credit card... really takes some awsome pictures... zooms right in... I cut off the edges of some pics to even things out.

 

Does anyone know how much a car coral does cost for Petite Lemans?