COMMENT
Damien Smith
RACING LINES
Kubica parades AF Corse team-mates Hanson (left) and Ye after Le Mans win
Talk about taking a view of the bigger picture. A chance to ride in the Goodyear Blimp offered me a spectacular fresh perspective on the recent Le Mans 24 Hours, just as the great race was setting in for its Saturday evening grind.
The American tyre company’s airship has been a near-ubiquitous sight in the skies above race tracks since 1973, and in the 100th-anniversary year of the best advertising billboard ever conceived, the Blimp was back for the 93rd edition of Le Mans. I thought I knew the place pretty well, but the gentle ride revealed the 8.4-mile Circuit de la Sarthe’s unexpected secrets (such as a pond that someone has created in the shape of Silverstone!) and brought home just how vast this race is in scale. Oh, and even up there above the helicopters and private jets taking off from the nearby runway, the V12 squall of Aston Martin’s Valkyrie was claiming the sonic victory just as it was on the ground.