Welcome to the "Your First Time at Le Mans" story series.

I decided to break this huge week+ long experience into smaller sized and self-contained stories you can read either in a sequence or in the order you prefer.

I hope you enjoy the stories as much as I did writing them!

Feel free to reply if you have any feedback, or if you had similar experiences and want to share. I read and get back to all replies.

If you really liked the article, it would be amazing for you to share with others who might also enjoy it!

Without further ado, today's story is:

Social media can be a horrible thing.

But some times it brings opportunities you would not get otherwise.

Me going to Le Mans is one of those.

Experiencing Le Mans has been in my wishlist for the longest time. I'm sure that if you have not been there, you can relate. Thoughts like "Oh, that would be SO cool to do. I should do it some time!" were frequent.

Most of the times, just wishful thinking but not a real "this can really happen" kind of approach. Until it did.

For a while I've been talking with my friend Ash in socials (currently on Bluesky as @upallnight.racing), and I learned he had been going yearly to Le Mans for 10+ years with a group of friends.

I sort of jokingly said that it was super cool that they did that and I'd "love to join". He replied that if I was serious about going, he could absolutely make me part of such group and we could go together.

Suddenly, the possibility was real.

I thought about it for some days, did some math (both financial as well as in terms of time: day job time off, other holidays, etc.) and surprisingly it looked like it could work out.

"Entering" to the 24 Hours of Le Mans itself is not a very expensive endeavour as, for example, doing so at F1 can be. It's all that's around it that makes it a harder bucket list item than "waiting for the race to be nearby".

One reason I was able to do this, is proximity.

I am very lucky to currently live in The Netherlands, around 700 to 800 km away from Le Mans (that's between 430 and 500 mi for my weird unit using friends).

This is more than doable. But that was not always the case for me.

When I lived in Argentina, I was almost 11.000 km (~6800 mi) away from Le Mans and with an Argentinian salary, which made this trip complicated enough not to be feasible since it means adding between 1 and 1.5k in flight costs alone.

After confirming I was interested in going, and with my own car, the guys did the necessary arrangements.

This included getting:

I needed to sort two specific things out:

The first point was sorted with a no-expenses-held-back sort of service + MOT that I had to do in April. The car did well, and with a couple of euros on top it was in tip top shape for June.

Now, about that camping gear…

I am a person who watches/read TONS of reviews/articles before making a purchase decision. Especially if it's something I am not familiar with.

My process goes roughly like this: