Thought I would fill you in on my trip at the weekend to Le Mans 24 hour.
We rode down on Friday morning after an early ferry from Jersey to Saint Malo, decided on staying off the toll roads as we are too tight to pay for them and also less of a chance of getting nicked.
So we obviously rode well within all speed limits all the way to Le Mans as we are good citizens of Europe. 
Weren’t staying in the camp sites as they can get a bit wild to say the least, with the locals getting made with it and will keep you awake all night revving their engines till they blow, ride their bikes drunk through your tent and set fire to you with their massive camp fires, so instead staying in a cheap hotel in the centre. 100 Euro for two nights plus 12 Euro for secure parking. Ditched our gear, got changed into shorts and T-shirts and got the excellent tram service  down to the circuit.
Caught the end of the Electric bike race, they were actually quite quick and only about 5 or 6 seconds slower than the Endurance bikes !
Anyway then onto the pit walk, which would be fine if the french were banned from attending it, instead about 6 thousand people crammed into the pit lane, snatching signed pictures from riders and getting in normal fans way.
Saturday was race day, got to the circuit, which even at 9am in the morning was full of shirtless drunk french people falling over and fighting, watched the 1000cc and 600cc racing and the Sidecars, and went for a wander.
Shaun or Packhorse as we called him as all our gear for the weekend went in his panniers on his ZZR1100 went to school with Yamaha Austria’s 4th team rider Steve Plater, so we met him by the paddock entrance, after a good 30 – 40 minute chat he whisked us into the garage for a quick tour whilst the team prepped the race bike for the start in 90 minutes !
Here are some pictures !
Interesting chat with the mechanics who just laughed when we asked how much it cost to build one, 50,000 euro’s for a swingarm was mentioned, eeek !
Anyway after about 40 minutes in there, we could sense that the rest of the team wanted Steve to do some work, so we left, day and trip made and the race hadn’t even started !
Watched the rest of the racing, nearly broke my ankle/legs in the middle of the night falling down some steps in the pitch black, rode home of course slowly and within the speed limits  had some lunch in St Malo and then ferry home in time to see the kids before bedtime.
Fantastic weekend, although I did learn a valuable lesson, take a torch if your going to a 24 hour race my ankle took 2 weeks to mend and a tetanus jab and a month of anti-biotic for the gash on my leg that ended up getting infected.
Kawasaki pretty much romped it from the start, the first YZF-R1 home was the David Checca GMT 94 bike in forth, Steve’s YART YZF-R1 bike came in (although he never got to race) in 7th after some long pit stops with electrical gremlins, the UK Honda TT legends team with John McGuiness and Cam Donald came in 5th, but the Kwaka and it’s riders were in a class of it’s own, as much as I hate to say it and deserved the win.
Sorry about the picture quality, had to use the iphone as my decent camera’s battery was knackered when we got there.
Anyway, may go again next year if anyone fancies meeting up !
In the meantime please look at our other posts about flash-tune ecu remap and flash Interfaces, ECU remap services and our quick shifter installation tutorial on my 2009 Yamaha YZF-R1 14b