Le Mans Classic

In 2016, my Dad asked if I fancied going to the Classic Le Mans race. The year before this we had been to the regular 24hr race which was an unforgettable experience. Motorsport has always been something I have had a passion for ever since my Dad brought me back a poster of the winning Jaguar from the 1983 Le Mans race. Which looked like this...

My experience at the race in 2015 was incredible. The noises, the smells, the insane constant partying both on and off the campsite. Le Mans really is a special place.

'Why the classic?' I asked my Dad. 'Well, it will be a change and we could drive down in the Alfa' he replied. Now, I must mention here that my dads pride and joy is his 1976 Alfa Romeo Spider. Here is a shot of it I took in a studio...

I actually left the hospital in this car when I was a baby so it's been part of my whole life and I've always relished the opportunity to have a blast in it. So it was settled, we were going!

I'll skip a couple of months now and get to the good stuff. We set of early in the morning to make our way to Plymouth to catch a ferry over to Roscoff. We had planned to lease with my Uncle at Plymouth who was making his way down on his pride and joy, his classic Moto Guzzi. What was instantly exciting about this trip, were the other obvious Le Mans travelers on the road heading in the same direction. We saw all sorts of exotic, classic cars on the road and when we took our place in the queue for the ferry, we were surrounded by interesting and beautiful automobiles.

After a many overly priced beers, gin and tonics and continental breakfasts we arrived at Roscoff. The weather was stunning. It was blisteringly hot, so we put the roof down and hit the open road.

Now the best thing about the French motorways, are the service stations. Although they may look like regular petrol stations, they actually contain some of the strongest and tastiest freshly made espressos know to mankind. I found it charming to see old boys sat around tables conversing, even if they were all smoking!? At this point, my uncle was feeling the heat more than we were in his head to toe biking leathers. I guess that's the price you pay when you only have two wheels...

The levels of excitement were rising as the signposts informed us of the ever decreasing km ahead. When we got there finally, we realised the queue to get in was going to take some time. The traffic was moving so slowly in fact, that there were people who had not only got out of there vehicles to stretch there legs, they had put up Gazebos at the side of the road and embarked on their initial BBQ's!

Eventually, we got in, found our pitch and created our base camp. My Dad has brought his second favorite object with him (which, like the Alfa had also been around my whole life), his prized Vango Force Ten Tent. He had used this when he was in his twenties and he was an avid rock climber, growing up in North Wales close to Snowdon and Llanberris pass. I had then spent ninety percent our our family holidays camping as a child in it, before he wussed out and bought a caravan.

So, the Force Ten was up, only one thing left to do...

After some undercooked sausages and a couple of boiled eggs I decided to go for a wander around the campsite and over the bridge into the pit area to soak up some of the crazy Le Mans atmosphere I remembered. Now, something strange hit me at this point, it was fairly quiet. There wasn't music booming across the campsite and beer chugs left, right and centre. There were amazing cars all around me, a sense of relaxation and many carefully stacked pyramids of empty Kronenbourg bottles to be seen. There didn't appear to be that many people wandering around though. I found this very strange and realised the classic was going to be very different.

And then it happened. A moment I will never forget, as I was wandering through the village in the centre of the circuit, I turned round and saw something that almost brought a tear to my eye. The Jag. The Jag from my poster (nearly - this one was number 2, same race though). WOW. It was real. It actually existed. Sitting in this car was probably one of the most awesome things I never thought I would get to do. Already, I was in love with the classic Le Mans.

That was going to take some beating, but the common occourance of walking round a corner to be face to face with a Ford GT40 or Ferrari 250 GTO certainly did not wear off. Not at all. At this point it's probably worth me mentioning that I wanted to photograph Le Mans in a very different way. I wanted to capture the atmosphere, the unusual and anything I found to be unique or memorable. I wasn't interested at all in photographing any of the racing. I was there to watch that, not to photograph it. I wanted to try and capture the essence of my experience there. Here are some of my initial photographs...