24 Heures du Mans | 13:57:00
In the middle of the night, French television, which provides the world feed, is mostly shut down. The extravagant visuals of the daylights hours, cameramen by the dozen, angles galore, & the willingness to mount any height—such as the dizzying Ferris wheel—are no more, no properly-unionized Frenchman being willing to work in the wee small hours. There are extensive views of the pit lane (which are great & valuable)… & not much else. Speed.com has been making extensive use of on-board visuals from the Corvette Racing duo, in part because Corvette is sponsoring the website's streaming coverage (while the network is broadcasting some or other N.A.S.C.A.R. nonsense). The fine folks at Speed also always take advantage of the night to send Justin Bell, a driver & the most humorous of their platoon of pit reporters, out amongst the "village" at the Circuit de la Sarthe, to show what the 24 Hours is like for the hundreds of thousands of fans who come to Le Mans, camp on the grounds, & eat, drink, & make merry for tomorrow they all may die. These tours are one of my favorite parts of the 24 Heures du Mans. I love Le Mans!