Le Mans Classic

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Checkered flag

Chequered flag, champagne on the podium, the usual interviews in front of the cameras. Then silence suddenly falls, like a curtain being drawn.

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Ferrari

250 GTO

The semi-trailers start to move in a ballet choreographed by the logistics teams, GPS set to Stuttgart, Maranello, Coventry. Forty tonnes of automotive dreams back on the highway, flashing lights and police escorts for the most valuable cargoes. In their bellies are Porsche 917s worth three million, Ferrari 250 GTOs worth fifty. Back to the warehouse, back to the air-conditioned silence of private collections.

Trampled sandwich wrappers, abandoned cups, crumpled programmes.

The stands empty with that particular end-of-show melancholy. Trampled sandwich wrappers, abandoned cups, crumpled programmes. The residues of a weekend full of emotion until the next event comes along. On the grids, a few kids are still collecting autographs from the drivers.

18:00

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Polished chrome

World

The remaining mechanics put away their tools with the obsessive precision that distinguishes the professional from the amateur. Every spanner in its laser-cut foam, every screw in its numbered compartment. These blue-overalled men are packing up decades of know-how, folding up the portable cathedrals of carbon fibre and aluminium.

In the deserted paddocks, naked reality reasserts itself: the slow emptying of a car park, tired but happy families.

19:30

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Nothing will remain

The clean-up crews arrive for the final sequence. Brooms, blowers, bin trucks. In two hours, there'll be nothing left of Le Mans Classic 2025. Just bare asphalt, empty grandstands, the silence of the Bugatti circuit. And here I am, camera in hand, trying to capture that fleeting instant between two worlds, those aftermath moments when dreams are packed away in trucks and magic turns back into logistics. The client wanted to sell the automotive dream, but what I'll be coming back with is a story about the beauty of the real and the ephemeral.

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