Dan Neil blogs the world’s greatest race. An excerpt:
I have been to most of the world’s great auto races, sometimes as a journalist, other times as a spectator, and I promise you Le Mans is the best. No other race has the history, the pageantry, the poetry of Le Mans. Unlike, say, an IRL race under the lights at Texas Motor Speedway –- entertaining but shallow –- Le Mans is long enough for dramas to unfold, narratives to play out, heroes and fools to be minted. I worked on the Panoz LMP900 crew a few years ago –- neither of the team’s cars finished the race –- but I stood in awe of the savage determination of the mechanics as they threw themselves onto the boiling-hot cars over and over, trying to patch up the suffering machines. My God. These people love racing.
The race begins at 3PM Saturday.