2010 American Le Mans

As promised, here's one example of a shot taken with the Canon 500 mm (and Tom, this one's for you!). On the plus side, image quality, clarity and sharpness were top-notch. On the minus side, it's heavy and somewhat unwieldy. I also found that, for Laguna at least, it didn't add enough over the 400 mm in getting really close to the action, except for the times when it was too much and I'd have been better off with something of shorter focal length! Anyway, worth the exercise in renting it, even if it meant I used it far too much, shooting with it even when it patently made no sense to do so!

The racing? It was OK, but there were far too many incidents throughout the day, resulting in way too much time spent running behind the safety cars. This seems to be an all too common aspect of racing here, especially the ALMS races.

Night Races

Racing Into The Night, ALMS 2008, Laguna Seca

I've raced in the dry and I've raced in the wet; I've driven in sprint races and endurance races; I've raced in the US and the UK. But, I cannot claim to have ever had the chance to race in the dark. I've read a lot of accounts of what it's like at Le Mans proper, especially in the old days of turbo charged long tail Porsches doing over 200 mph down the Mulsanne straight in the pitch dark, and quite frankly it sounded terrifying, an impression not changed by noting that the drivers often felt exactly the same way. Definitely a case of taking the brave pills and refusing to listen to the nagging voice in your head that says there's no way you can get round the next corner flat in fourth,despite the fact that you've already done so many times in the past.

Don't know if I will ever have enough time and/or money to race again, but even if I do then I think I'll stick to the daylight hours and leave this challenge to the pros.

What the 360 Means in Xbox 360

Porsche 911 GT3 Having a Bad Day, Laguna Seca, 2008

"Degrees of rotation" would be the answer, at least in this case. This GT3 nerfed the car in front between turns two and three, somewhere close to the back of the pack. Lots of tyre smoke (blue stuff front left) and bits of bodywork was the result, along with the exit of this competitor from the race. If only it had been hit by a car sponsored by Nintendo then the world would have been in perfect harmony, but alas not!