Petit Le Mans 2010 – Not so Petit this year

Night Practice 2010 Petit Le Mans (Darren Pierson)

Road Atlanta is our home track, we live all of 40 miles from it.  Consequently, I spend quite a bit of time shooting there.  I take this as a challenge though and try to perfect the staples such as Sunset in the Esses all the while looking for new angles and shots.  Petit is somewhat more relaxing for us than other races, the drive is short, we know where the stores are to stock the RV, our site is reserved; you name it, the trip is a breeze.  Why then do I always feel like I completely miss everything each year?  After each race, I do usually watch the coverage so I can see the details of what happened, but for some reason, at Petit, I remain oblivious from Wednesday on.  Thankfully, Kim is there and can fill me in on what I missed and the notes that the ALMS staff hand out after each session come in handy as well.

#07 Team Peugeot Total Peugeot 908 HDi FAP: Marc Gene, Alexander Wurz, Anthony Davidson (Darren Pierson)

Unlike last year, Georgia had not received twenty inches of rainfall the week prior.  There was some rain in the forecast, but none of it scheduled for race day.  I left home Wednesday in the dark of the morning and drove up to Road Atlanta for the 7:30 AM photographer meeting.  Not much exciting happened at the meeting other than John Thawley adding me to his Postcards from Petit Le Mans Polaroid Adventure and learning fron John Notts that touching the Porsche Hybrid while the red light was on was a bad idea.  I was back in Athens by 9:30 AM having coffee with Kim.  After picking up our scooter from Recycle and loading up on supplies, we headed up to the track to set up camp so I could shoot the afternoon test session.  Grey and dark would be the only way to describe the start of the session and the sky stayed that way throughout.  Despite not seeing the Audis or Peugeots since Sebring, they looked right at home dropping down into Turn 10 and then blasting under the bridge.  The Radical was back as well along with a few new cars in GT2 so the field was going to be impressive.

#5 Libra Racing Radical SR9 IES: Andrew Prendeville, Harri Toivonen, Peter Dempsey (Darren Pierson)

Thursday morning started out cloudy with bits of blue sky sneaking through, by the afternoon practice though, the track was wet enough that very few cars ventured out.  The rain did let up near the nd of the session and a few more cars came out, but essentially only five cars participated in the practice.  Despite being disappointed, I can understand the reasoning not to run in wet practice.  The cars need to be in one piece for Night Practice and there was very little chance of rain on raceday.  The highlight of afternoon practice was forgetting my monopod and having to handhold a 500mm while standing in the rain, not optimal.  The rain stayed away and the track continued to dry due to all of the support races.  All of the ALMS drivers have to participate in the night practice in order to compete in the race, so unless something is terribly amiss, all of the cars will be on the track for most of the practice.  Once the sun sets, there are not too many place you can shoot.  Most shooters will go to either 6-7 or the Turn 10 complex; there is also quite a bit of light in the pits and front straight.  Despite 6-7 being a zoo with all of the fans crowding up to the fences, the atmosphere is usually electric.  Despite is probably the wrong word isn’t it?  Because of all of the fans crowding the fences……..

#911 Porsche Motorsports North America Porche 911 GT3R Hybrid: Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas, Mike Rockenfeller (Darren Pierson)

Friday:  Beautiful, sunny, warm, quali.  Breaking from tradition, I decided to shoot quali from some place other than the pits.  I worked the inside of turn 2 and three since I had not been up there all week and the light was directionally perfect for the location.  During the race I was going to work the outside of the same area, so I also was on the lookout for shots I thought would look great from driver’s left.  Quali has been a mixed bag this year, too often the heavy hitters in each class go out and put down a few fast laps and then park it.  Excepting the challenge classes, there have been few moments where cars were battling back and forth for the pole.  What this tends to mean for the photographers and fans is that most of the cars disappear after a few laps of qualification.  Not terribly exciting most of the time.

#88 Velox Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 Cup: Shane Lewis, Jerry Vento (Darren Pierson)

Saturday morning is Race Day.  Race day always starts with an exciting early morning mandatory photo meeting.  Coffee is a requirement.  The rest of the morning always seems to go by in a blur and suddenly I find myself standing on the grid, wishing for just a few more minutes alone with the cars before the fans are let loose.  This never happens, suddenly there are thousands of people and its time to head off to find my spot for the start.  I should point out here that one of the things that makes the ALMS so great is the fact they let the fans down onto the grid, I’m just being a whiny photographer.  This year I had a reserved spot on the stand in turn one, so naturally, I decided to shoot from driver’s left three quarters of the way down the front straight.  Not one of my best decisions, my start shots were no where near as dramatic a last year, but I am still glad I tried something new.  After the start, I went up past turn one on the outside and walked up the hill to shoot from two and three and down the esses into four and five.  This is a great place from which to shoot, but some of the better angles require long glass to crop out some of the more distracting background noise.  After about an hour, my wonderful wife Kim picked me up at the media center and we went back to the RV for lunch and to work out the schedule for the rest of the day.  I decided I would work in the pit lane in the early afternoon and then hit the esses a couple of hours prior to sunset before hitting 6-7 as the sun was going down.

#02 Extreme Speed Motorsports Ferrari 430 GT: Ed Brown, Guy Cosmo, Joao Barbosa

Normally I try to shoot some from outside 6-7, but I didn’t make it back there this year.  Unfortunate though since the whole time I was shooting from there last year I kept complaining about the lack of a 500mm; this year I had one and didn’t take the time to go.  Lazy I guess.  Once the sun set and it got dark, we went down to pit lane and winners circle to wait for the finish.  I didn’t have a radio with me, so I didn’t know that the Risi has run out of fuel on the last lap.

#7 Audi Sport Team Joest Audi R15: Rinaldo Capello, Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish

I like that they have made Petit the final race of the year, but its always sad to realize that the season is over.  I do have a few smaller races to shoot the round out the rest of the year so I won’t be completely bored, but I can tell you that we will be Jonesing for winter practice at Sebring.  Thanks for reading.  My entire 2010 ALMS Petit Le Mans powered by  Mazda 2 photo gallery is available online at DPerceptions MototSports Photography.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 9:24 PM. It is filed under ALMS, Blog, Petit Le Mans, photo, Places We Went, Racing, Road Atlanta and tagged with ALMS, American Le Mans Series, Petit Le Mans, Road Atlanta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.