The 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans starts here!!  Yes, the roads of Le Sarthe will soon be echoing again to the sounds of the best sportscars of the World.  The 24 Hours race itself is still nearly three weeks away but, with a timetable change this year, the 'preliminary parctice' weekend has been scheduled closer to the race and takes place next weekend.  In the past the two 'events' seemed a little detached from each other but, with just two weeks between them and the race build up lasting a week, this year it will feel more like a two week long event, blending practice with race.

On Sunday 5th June the roads will be closed and the 50 invited entrants for this year's race will take to the awesome 8.4 mile circuit to get some idea of how competitive or otherwise they will be on the 18th/19th June.  All teams must take part in the preliminary practice although not all drivers will necessarily be there.  However, with so little opportunity to test on the full Le Mans circuit virtually all the drivers will be out on track.

This year promises to be yet another exciting battle for overall and class honours.  The Audi R8s are back again, but rule changes will make it difficult for them.  Watch out for the Dyson Lolas, the Domes, the Pescarolos and the Courages to take the fight to them for overall honours.  We musn't also discount the Creation DBA, the works Zytek version of which was controversially not invited to take part.

The overall prototype class is called P1 with the smaller prototypes called P2.  In this second level of prototypes watch out for the Courages entered by a number of teams.   Their main competition may well come from the Lolas, two from UK teams (Chamberlain and RML) and one from the US (Intersport).

GT cars are also split into two classes, 1 and 2.  GT1 will be our focus for the event as Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Jan Magnussen will be seeking to defend their 2004 Le Mans class win.  It is never easy but this year their main competition will be from their team mates in the #63 Corvette C6.R and the two Aston Martin DBR9s, built by Prodrive in Banbury and certain to gain huge British support.  The Ollies and Jan know what it takes to win in the #64 Compuware Corvette C6.R as do their main rivals.  An epic battle is envisaged, one that may even eclipse the fight with the Prodrive Ferrari 550Ms last year.  There are also 4 Ferrari 550Ms in the mix again this year - it's going to be a Classic!!

In GT2 can anyone defeat the ubiquitous Porsche 911 GT3?  Two Ferrari 360s, two Panoz Elans, a Spyker C8 and a TVR Tuscan all hope that someone can!

We will bring you the latest news and photographs from the test day next week.  It may be a little behind the usual updates as we are going out there to support Oliver and haven't managed to organise internet access!  Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!

Nick Moss (nm@olivergavin.com)