Today has seen me do very little. This week has utterly drained me. Took time to do lots of little jobs for the school website, my site, the blogs for key stage 2 classes… all those things. Alongside this, I’ve been dipping in and out of the Le Mans 24 Hours race – something Mrs Pitts finds utterly pointless, and I find utterly fascinating. The opening of the race this year, however, was tragic as Allan Simonsen, a Danish driver crashed minutes into the race. The Dane, who was 34 years old, and had started from pole in the GTE Am class, crashed heavily at Tertre Rouge early on, bringing out the safety car and causing significant damage to the barriers.
A statement from Le Mans organiser the ACO read:
At 15h09 the #95 Aston Martin Vantage GTE, driven by Allan Simonsen of Denmark, exited the track at high-speed at the Tertre Rouge corner on his fourth lap of the race. The driver was immediately attended on the scene by the doctors from the Automobile Club de l’Ouest‘s Medical Service. In a serious condition, Allan Simonsen was transferred immediately to the circuit medical centre, where he died soon after. Allan Simonsen’s family has been informed immediately by David Richards, principal of Aston Martin Racing.
As I type, the incident is being discussed by the commentators on British Eurosport – he was leading the race, had just set the fastest lap and some of the drivers from the early section of the race were unaware of the severity of the accident. The race was held under safety car conditions for just under an hour while repairs were made to the barriers.
Hopefully the rest of this 81st running of the race will go comparatively smoothly. Right now, with 14 hours, 21 minutes and 39 seconds left of the race, the Audi R18 e-tron of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Loic Duval is in the lead.
Geocaching update: tonight’s cache was GC3Q6N3, a fairly straightforward cache – when we approached the location, there were obvious signs of its placement. Still, we continue to fill gaps in our calendar; we have only six days left this month in which to find caches before June is full. There are only 19 days in July to get too!
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