Here is the origin story of Club Arnage as best I remember...
It was in 1995 while we were on the way home from the 24 hours, riding in the back of a Transit van with my mate Melvyn. We were laughing about the couple we had run into in the city of Le Mans, just outside the cathedral. They were looking for the circuit. It was their first time and they literally had no idea which direction to go. Melv, being a technical guy, suggested we should put something on this new fangled Internet thingy so that Brits going to La Sarthe for the first time would have a resource to help them.
A month or two later I tentatively set up a small web page listing advice from my own experiences and some information from the ACO. At that time the name of the website was "lemans.co.uk". At that time there was no other website dedicated to Le Mans. It was even before the ACO had a website. It was instantly popular, so much so that the ACO even took notice, but not in a good way! They were supportive of what I was doing, but were very unhappy that I was using "LeMans" in the URL, so unhappy in fact that a letter from ACO lawyers arrived at my door. I called the head of the ACO communications department who was very charming but insistent that we call ourselves something else. Within 24 hours, "lemans.co.uk" was dead and "club-arnage.com" was born. I took the opportunity of the site change to create a simple online Visitors' Book where people could leave messages. This proved VERY popular and the book grew to the point where I had to upgrade it to a threaded message board. A few years later the message board was replaced by the Forum, set up by Lennart AKA 'Djet'.
The rest, as they say, is history...
