Used to be a regular, from 1998 to 2018 but hadn't been since. A lot has changed - at the circuit itself and around.

The bad:
You used to be able to buy a ticket at the gate. Fat chance of that now.
The wholly ineffective security on the gate and the closure of the Terre Rouge entry is just annoying. Can't take beers in with you any more, and it's 8 Euros a pint inside.
*Massive* crowds around the essses at the start.
Friday's a bit dull now. I can remember the days when people would line up their cars at Indianapolis and Hunaudieres, and you could wander around with a beer meeting fellow car nuts. Now the only people you see on the circuit are cyclists and...joggers?!


The good:
Whatever you think about BoP etc, the hypercars look awesome (especially the Valkyrie) and they sound decent was well - rumbling Caddy v screaming Aston.
Watching at the Esses and Tertre Rouge at 2am is still mind-blowing. Nothing else in motorsport comes close.
Food on offer at Hunaudieres has improved, even if getting there has become trickier!
A big thank you to Zak Brown who cheerfully did a selfie with my lad after we bumped into him and his guests.

The old entrance to the Porsche Curves seems to have become a private campsite. Anyone know where the entrance is now?

If he punched a producer he should be fired - simple as that. Unless you want to say that being rich and successful makes workplace bullying acceptable...

TG makes a huge amount of money for the Beeb, so they can't can it - but it's about time it had a revamp anyway. It used to be fantastic, but let's face it, the format has become pretty tired now.

I say get rid of Clarkson and the increasingly irritating Hamster, bring in Jodie Kidd and Chris Evans or Steve Coogan.

Cool film. Only two things annoyed me. 1) Some pretty clunky dialogue and 2) The "gear change turbo effect", as seen in loads of racing films where two drivers are neck and neck, then one of them changes gear and surges ahead. On the plus side - 70s racers and Olivia Wilde. Bring it on!

If that picture really is of the crash site, it's pretty shocking, but I guess we should bear a couple of points in mind: 1) the barrier had to be repaired very quickly after the crash. It's entirely possible that the mountings had shifted in the impact, and that the original barrier was further away from the tree (although that clearly didn't prevent the car from hitting it). 2) The ACO actually has a reasonably good record for protecting drivers in recent years. There are far more gravel traps and double-layer tyre barriers than there used to be and we've had some truly appalling smashes from which the driver has walked, or at least limped, away. As has already been pointed out, the crash site was on the exit of the corner, well away from the "normal" trajectory of a spinning/crashing car. My guess is this was a combination of poor oversight, sheer bad luck and the fact that a street circuit which has to be reopened to normal traffic very quickly can never be made entirely safe.

Nice video here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23051252

Bumpy old track, that.

Lots of cops hidden in laybys on the LM-Rouen motorway, and a couple on bridges as well.

Better chance of making the race than the Green GT anyway,

Used to be all about mad friday and racing for me. Then I had kids. Now it's a chance to sleep, drink and get a hangover without being jumped on at 6am. And yeah, it is getting a bit sterile, but you'd only need one accident in which a few spectators got killed for the whole event to end forever - it aint 1955 any more. We tend to forget, these cars are seriously quick and occasionally they do fly. Wing Commander Webber knows that.

Why wait for the film anyway? Nice radio documentary narrated by Vicki BH

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rfy5f

Electric cars make sense in cities, where most journeys are short, it's easy to set up charging points and you don't actually need motorway-type performance. They aren't an all-round substitute for petrol/diesel cars, and the mistake people make is in expecting the two to to be interchangeable. So they have a role as urban transport. Motorsport can help develop the technology.

The Drayson car can run for about 15 minutes, flat chat - and the battery pack is pretty big. I'm sure you're right, though - it shouldn't be impossible. Packaging would probably be an issue - as Boeing has found out, you have to be a bit careful.

True - but the batteries would need to be a lot smaller than they are at the moment. In Formula E they're planning to have pitstops where you swap the entire car.

The Drayson car hasn't actually been developed for endurance racing - they're using it as a test bed for Formula E. In theory, you could have longer races  - but you'd have to bury a lot of very powerful induction coils in the road to enable wireless charging. Might make sense on city circuits, where they could also be used to charge elctric buses etc - but not much point on a semi-rural circuit like LM.

You can see it here in action: http://bbc.in/146AFbf

Not much quieter than the diesels really.