6-13-2006 - Colin does blog for Speed TV from Le Mans - Day #1

By Colin Braun

Well, we got here on Sunday straight from Watkins Glen, so I’ve had a chance to acclimatise and get my body clock straight a bit. All the Krohn Racing drivers (Tracy Krohn, Nic Jonsson and me) are staying in a fancy, chateau ten minutes away from the track. It’s got its own pool so we’ve been swimming every night. I’ve also been playing ping pong with Nic who claims to be a Swedish World Champion or something!

I thought tech yesterday – over here it’s called Scrutineering – was really neat. It’s held in the middle of Le Mans and there are hundreds of people there to see it. In the US, tech seems to be a 5-minute process but here it takes about 3 hours to go through. I wanted to be able to savour every thing about the whole experience so I didn’t mind.

We had to present our licenses, medical certificates and all our racing gear, and get fitted out with a little wrist band which all the drivers have to wear for id purposes. Each of the 3 drivers has a different colour – mine is red.

Then there was a round of media interviews to do, plus live TV going out all over Europe. I’m glad Mom and Dad were there to see it all with me.
Once the cars were through tech there was a big team photo with the car, everyone on the team and the drivers. It looked really good from where I was standing! There were lots of fans and lots of autograph signing.

I had a pretty easy day on Wednesday as nothing happened on track till 7.00 pm. It took us an hour to get in because there was so much traffic – and that’s on a Wednesday. I can’t imagine what it will be like by Saturday.

We had a couple of meetings towards the end of the afternoon including the drivers’ briefing which was neat. I was sitting among some really big names like Tom Kristensen, Emanuele Pirro, Sebastien Bourdais and Jacques Villeneuve. That was also different to the briefings in the US. It was quick and to the point.