One for the money!

Le Mans, France -- Race teams, courseworkers, members of the media and fans here awoke to grey skies and rain. The question everyone's mind is how long will this depression last and will if ultimately affect the final results of the 75th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The weather forecast is for the "Seattle" weather to reamin with the track until 8 pm this evening and then it will change -- but whether it will change for the better or the worse is yet to be determined.

As of 9 am a patch of blue sky opened over the track and 15 minutes later there was sunshine -- but no sooner had the sun come out then the clouds returned the track to overcast. Weather will most likely deal the race a wild card and teams with the best weather guesser may have an advantage when it comes to dealing with the all important tire changes.

Teams will have their choice of three different kinds of tires (or as they say in the UK tyres): Standard tires for dry pavement, rain tyres for a wet track, and an intermediate tire that is a crossover between the two. Making the change at the right time in the race is tmay be the difference between winning and first runner-up.

There is the air of months and months of preparation in the air since yesterday evening as teams take care of critical last minute adjustments and put together their strategies for the 24 hours of competition still to come.

In the big shoot out of the day it will be defending champ Audi against the up and coming French Peugeot team. The Peugeot has won the first two endurance type races of the year and has set fast time at Le Mans to hold the pole position for today's event.

At 9 a.m. the track was opened for practice cars took the track spewing roostertails off their wheels that when cars are at speed together provide a spectacular image and a difficult driving conditions.

One of the amazing things to see this morning on the way to the track is the massive number of fans who camped out last night -- many of them partying into the morning. Field upon field of motorhomes and thousands of tents, many of them flying the colors of their favorite team. More than 200,000 fans are expected for the race today and fans here do not let a little rain keep them from their motor racing.

This is a far cry from the wussie-boy Champ cCar racing of the United States where a little rain caused the the Indy 500 to be stopped. As Herodotus wrote in 500 BC (which was rewritten by William Kendall in 1927) and which we further tweaked for Le Mans: "Neither rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow nor heat of day nor dark of night shall keep this these drivers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

As practice ends, the sun sprinkles for an obligatory 15 seconds, giving us hope for the future, and then the grey skies return, to remind everyone to be prepared for Mother Nature to play her hand.