However, if anyone is interested to find out how a 21 year old Cupra R fared on a 1200 mile round trip to Le Mans 24 hour, complete with camping gear and dad and lad on board, read on.
This is this cars second trip over to France for the 24 hr, the last being in 2023.
Early start to get from Liverpool to Folkestone for the 11.35 Le shuttle to Calais. Making good time on the journey down allowed us to get an earlier train.
The beauty about heading to Le Mans are the cars you see on the way down.
The car park at Folkestone was the start with hundreds of supercars, classics and decorated cars all ready to ascend on France. This was my favourite: classic 911.
From Calais to Le Mans with a couple of stops for refreshment and without pushing it is about 5.1/2 / 6 hours.
Done it much quicker than that in years gone by but now setting a good example to my 14 year old on how it should be done with frequent stops and sticking to the speed limits.
Tent set up and some food from the hospitality tent then walked up to the circuit.
No matter how many times i go, seeing the circuit for the first time still makes the hairs on my arms stand up. The history of the place makes it so special.
Friday afternoon allows you to walk or cycle the track. Every year we say we’ll just walk some of it, but end up doing most of it.
At over 9 miles it’s a fair old walk but we took our radio controlled cars to make it more entertaining. It also entertained lots of other people on the way round.
No prizes for guessing which is my car of choice. Unfortunately it didn’t end well for my RC Cupra R, firstly ended up backwards into a barrier then my steering servo lost a screw, so my lad enjoyed the rest of the lap with the Renault Laguna much to the delight of the locals.
Rear end damage and the offending barrier.
Part way round on Mulsanne/ arnage is a car show. Hundreds of Porsche’s etc but one car caught my eye in particular, a rather tidy looking mk2 Cupra.
Saturday race day. Grandstand seats this time meant we didn’t have to claim a spot hours before the start on the main pit straight with our camping chairs.
So we visited the museum which has to be done, stunning old Le Mans cars in there which do vary year on year so we still visit every time.
Race starts at 4pm so the next 24 hours are spent between our grandstand seats opposite the pits and our campsite viewing banking on Porsche curves.
A few hours sleep in between but the roar of the cars whizzing by a few yards away from your tent make for a different kind of sleep.
The green Aston Valkeyrie there in the pits is something else. It was a bit off the pace but an old school V12 you knew when that passed, even in the night when you weren’t watching.
At the end of the race at 4 pm Sunday, you can venture back on the track to see the cars close up in parc ferme. Barriers around them obviously, but to get so close to them post race is pretty cool.
You can smell the heat coming from them even after half an hour or so.
The icing on the cake for me, despite about 8 manufacturers in hypercar class,
the winning Ferrari was the satellite team car run by AF corse. Why was that my favourite:
Because it’s the same colour as mine
I even picked the correct Ferrari roundalls to decorate my car with before we left.
The journey home, much the same as the way down, my car performing faultlessly,
averaged a very reasonable 36.2mpg over the 1200 miles which is pretty good for an old Cupra R packed with all the paraphernalia for 5 days camping. The car just ticked over to 80k a few miles from home so hopefully many more years in the old girl yet.
No aches or pains from 13.5 hours drive home either, although the Recaros in my car seem to be getting tighter around my XL sized framework.
Was never a problem in my 20’s, at 45 it may be my motivation to lose some weight so I can fit in my car still in a few years time.
We turned a lot of heads and got lots of admirers on the campsite and at the services with the bright yellow Cupra R.
We also counted 5 mk1’s on the road over the whole 5 days too which was 4 more than last time. Only one on the English side of the channel though.
Post journey, the car resembles a fly graveyard so a much deserved wash and polish will be a job for the weekend.
Hope you enjoyed a little insight into a trip to Le Mans.
Nathan.
