News from France

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First pictures available

356 row

general view in the Ansouis Castle Sunday May 6th

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The oldest 356 in France
356 PRE A 1949

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The 914 corner


Reserved to Porsche but not only cars

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taken last week end by my friend J. C. Grangeon

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This week end were raced the 84th edition of the le Mans 24 hours race
Three major car compannies were fighting for the final victory
Porsche last year winner with their last year car just improved on soe points
Audi 5th times winner in 2010/2011/2012/2013 and 2014 with a completely new diesel/hybrid car
Toyota entering the le Mans race for the 17th times and never able to win

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The qualifying sessions last Wednesday determine the following starting positions
2 Porsches on the first row
2 Toyota on the second row
2 Audi on the third row
A few minutes before the start of the race yesterday June 18th at 3PM French time a terrible storm hit Le Mans with a so heavy rain that the race director decided to have the start at the right hour but all the cars following the pace racecar
This procession last for nearly one hour and both the spectators and the pilots started to protest
At last the race start at 4 PM and the 23 remaining hours were raced with no more rain
During the first hours Porsche Audi and Toyota fight for the first place
The first car to have a serious problem needing several minutes to solve was one of the 2 Audi with a turbo failure (23 minutes to change it not bad !)
All the

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All the 5 remaining cars were in the same lap with only a few seconds in between
Very quickly Porsche realise that Toyota cars although they were a little slower than their cars had a huge advantage in petrol consumption allowing them to make 14 laps with the 60 liters compulsory fuel tank against 13 laps for Porsche
With a refuelling time of a minimum of 25 seconds plus the time lost to join the pits it was a huge advantage of more than a minute
During the whole race Porsche had to refuel 29 times against 27 times only for Toyota so a 2 minutes + advantage for Toyota
Porsche had a failure on the car race number 1 which took quite a long time to be solved and Toyota car race number 6 missed a curve and went in the sand gravel field
Luckily for them being a 4 wheels drive car they succeed to go out of the gravel very quickly but had to stop at the pit to check and clean the car loosing 4 laps on the 2 first cars
The 2 Audi were already fa

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The 2 Audi were already far away (more than 10 laps behind the 2 leading cars)
At 2 PM after 23 hours of race the Toyota car race number 5 was first with the Porsche car race number 2 behind by 30 seconds
Porsche realise that they had lost the race and Toyota was preparing to celebrate their first win after 16 unsuccessful attempts
5 minutes before the checkered flag Toyoya pilot announced by radio that his engine had loss all its power
Very quickly the Porsche number 2 close the gap and pass him
Furthermore the Toyota pilot of the Toyota number 5 Kazuki Nakajima who was offered by his team to finish the race made a huge mistake
Indeed he succeed to succeed to drive slowly his car near the finishing line
Not aware of the Le Mans reglementation that a car is considering to have finish the race only if it has covered the last lap in less than 6 minutes he cross the finishing line 2 minutes before the end of the race and park the car
Very quickly he was told by Toyota mangement that he had to do another full lap (13 kilometers) but the engine did not allow him to complete this last lap in less than 6 minutes
Overall classification