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GETTING TO THE CIRCUIT

THE CIRCUIT

THE CIRCUIT
Le Mans Circuit France
The Le Mans MotoGP circuit is located 125 miles south-west of Paris and three miles south of the city of Le Mans. The 4.18 kilometre La Sarthe – Le Mans track was built around the famous 24-hour circuit in 1965. For safety reasons, after a very serious crash, it was closed down in 1995, then reopened in 2000.
The speed record belongs to Casey Stoner with Km./h 266.086 in 2006.
Very fast on the home stretch, the remainder of the track is made of short bends and straights, thus very challenging. At the entrance of the circuit there is the Automobile Museum of La Sarthe, a great voyage through the car and races history.
The race track is about 4 kms from the city centre.
A serious accident in 1995 involving Spanish rider Alberto Puig saw it taken off the calendar until 2000 in order to carry out safety improvements. The circuit uses the main straight and the remarkable fast right hand bend between the towering grandstands that leads to the famous Dunlop chicane. The remainder of the circuit is very “stop and start” with a crucial slow right hand bend leading back into the start and finish straight. At the gates of the circuit is the Automobile Museum of La Sarthe. This museum takes young and old alike on a spectacular voyage of discovery in the land of the automobile. There are 3,600 square yards in which to be astonished, to understand, to sample and discover an exceptional collection.
Paris represents the easiest and closest access by air being Orly the nearest (about 128 miles) with the Roissypole (Charles de Gaulle) a little farther away.

CONTROLLED MOTORCYCLE PARKING :
Access to controlled motorcycle parking “Parking gardé” is priority given to those who purchased their tickets before April 15 (10 000 motorcycles) located "Centre des Exposition" - including a facility to leave helmets (1). Thanks the organisers and sponsors AMV, DUNLOP etc. (1) limited space available.

PARKING PRIVILEGE :
Parking Privilege - car or bike - is located “Centre des Expositions”. This parking (no extra charge) is restricted to holders of tickets “Tribune Privilege" or "Tribune La Chapelle”
PARKING and CAMPSITE GARAGE VERT
This area - parking and camping - (no extra cost) is exclusively reserved for ticket holders of “Tribune Garage Vert”

GRANDSTANDS :
Access to many grandstands is free (more than 7000 seats). Access to grandstands with reserved seats : pits (VIP) , pits straight Line T15 or T16, Privilege, La Chapelle, Garage Vert and G.Durand) is restricted to holders of tickets corresponding to the grandstand. All around the circuit, there are strategically placed terraces – La Chapelle, le Musée, le Chemin aux Boeufs, les “S” bleus – with excellent viewing.

ACCOMMODATION :
There is an important hotel infrastructure in Le Mans itself and the surrounding suburbs. There is also the possibility of staying in local people’s homes
For further information : Tourism office +33 2 43 28 17 22 www.lemanstourisme.com
Le Mans website : www.ville-lemans.fr

CATERING :
From the commercial village to grandstand areas, including paddock and concert area, you will find numerous food kiosks : fast food, sandwich, restaurants...

BIG SCREENS :
There are 6 big screens on the circuit allowing the spectator to follow all of the practices and races in live. They can be seen from - the straight line grandstands - the Privilege grandstand - La Chapelle bend - Garage Vert bend - Chemin aux Boeufs corner.

WALKMAN :
A receiver FM, given free to the spectators, regulated on the frequency of a radio especially created for the GP, will enable you to penetrate in the slides of the French Moto GP, to listen to on line all classifications, interviews, comments of pilots. (Only in French language).

HISTORY & GEO

France is a member state of the European Union located in its western region, with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its main ideals expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as L’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is bordered (clockwise from the north) by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Spain and Andorra. France's overseas departments and collectivities also share land borders with Brazil and Suriname (bordering French Guiana), and the Netherlands Antilles (bordering Saint-Martin). France is linked to the United Kingdom by the Channel Tunnel, which passes underneath the English Channel.

France is the largest state in the European Union by area and the third largest in Europe behind Russia and Ukraine. It would be second if its extra-European territories like French Guiana were included. France has been a major power for many centuries with strong economic, cultural, military and political influence. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Pacific islands.

France is a developed country and possesses the fifth largest economy by nominal GDP and eighth largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is the most visited country in the world, receiving 82 million foreign tourists annually. France is one of the founding members of the European Union, and has the largest land area of all members. It is also a founding member of the United Nations, and a member of the Francophonie, the G8, G20, NATO, OECD, WTO and the Latin Union. It is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, possesses the third largest number of nuclear weapons in the world and the largest number of nuclear power plants in the European Union.

HISTORY

Rome to revolution

The borders of modern France are approximately the same as those of ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls. Gaul was conquered for Rome by Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC,and the Gauls eventually adopted Roman speech (Latin, from which the French language evolved) and Roman culture. Christianity first appeared in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, and became so firmly established by the fourth and fifth centuries that St. Jerome wrote that Gaul was the only region “free from heresy”.
France after the Hundred Years War. Red line: Boundary of the Kingdom of France; Light blue: the directly held royal domain

In the 4th century AD, Gaul’s eastern frontier along the Rhine was overrun by Germanic tribes, principally the Franks, from whom the ancient name of “Francie” was derived. The modern name “France” derives from the name of the feudal domain of the Capetian Kings of France around Paris. The Franks were the first tribe among the Germanic conquerors of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity rather than Arianism (their King Clovis did so in 498); thus France obtained the title “Eldest daughter of the Church” (La fille ainée de l’Église), and the French would adopt this as justification for calling themselves “the Most Christian Kingdom of France”.

Existence as a separate entity began with the Treaty of Verdun (843), with the division of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire into East Francia, Middle Francia and Western Francia. Western Francia approximated the area occupied by modern France and was the precursor to modern France.
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre depict the destruction unleashed on civilians during the Thirty Years' War.

The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned King of France. His descendants, the Direct Capetians, the House of Valois and the House of Bourbon, progressively unified the country through a series of wars and dynastic inheritance. The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars of Occitania (the south of modern-day France). In the end, both the Cathars and the independence of southern France were exterminated.

In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War. In the most notorious incident during the French Wars of Religion (1562–98), thousands of Huguenots were murdered in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572.

The monarchy reached its height during the 17th century and the reign of Louis XIV. At this time France possessed the largest population in Europe (see Demographics of France) and had tremendous influence over European politics, economy, and culture. French became, and remained until the 20th century, the common language of diplomacy in international affairs. Much of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and major scientific breakthroughs were achieved by French scientists in the 18th century. In addition, France obtained many overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa and Asia.
Monarchy to Republic
Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789

The monarchy ruled France until the French Revolution. It did not fall immediately after the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, but endured until the creation of the First Republic in September 1792. Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were executed (in 1793), along with thousands of other French citizens during the Reign of Terror.After a series of short-lived governmental schemes, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the Republic in 1799, making himself First Consul, and later Emperor of what is now known as the First Empire (1804–1814). In the course of several wars, his armies conquered most of continental Europe, with members of the Bonaparte family being appointed as monarchs of newly established kingdoms. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic wars.

Following Napoleon's final defeat in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, the French monarchy was re-established, but with new constitutional limitations. In 1830, a civil uprising established the constitutional July Monarchy, which lasted until 1848. The short-lived Second Republic ended in 1852 when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte proclaimed the Second Empire. Louis-Napoléon was unseated following defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and his regime was replaced by the Third Republic.

France had colonial possessions, in various forms, since the beginning of the 17th century until the 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, its global overseas colonial empire was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. At its peak, between 1919 and 1939, the second French colonial empire extended over 12,347,000 square kilometres (4,767,000 sq mi) of land. Including metropolitan France, the total area of land under French sovereignty reached 12,898,000 square kilometres (4,980,000 sq mi) in the 1920s and 1930s, which is 8.6% of the world's land area.
France issued the single European currency, the euro, in 2002, together with 16 other EU member states it forms the Eurozone. Here shown a French side of euro coin.

France was an occupied nation in World War I and World War II. The human and material losses in the first war, which left 1.4 million French soldiers dead, exceeded largely those of the second, even though only a minor part of its territory was occupied during World War I. The interbellum phase was marked by a variety of social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government. Following the German blitzkrieg campaign in World War II metropolitan France was divided in an occupation zone in the north and Vichy France, a puppet regime loyal to Germany, in the south.

The Fourth Republic was established after World War II and, despite spectacular economic growth (les Trente Glorieuses), it struggled to maintain its political status as a dominant nation state. France attempted to hold on to its colonial empire, but soon ran into trouble. The half-hearted 1946 attempt at regaining control of French Indochina resulted in the First Indochina War, which ended in French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Only months later, France faced a new, even harsher conflict in Algeria.

The debate over whether or not to keep control of Algeria, then home to over one million European settlers, wracked the country and nearly led to civil war. In 1958, the weak and unstable Fourth Republic gave way to the Fifth Republic, which contained a strengthened Presidency. In the latter role, Charles de Gaulle managed to keep the country together while taking steps to end the war. The Algerian War and Franco-French civil war that resulted in the capital Algiers, was concluded with peace negotiations in 1962 that led to Algerian independence.

In recent decades, France's reconciliation and cooperation with Germany have proved central to the political and economic integration of the evolving European Union, including the introduction of the euro in January 1999. France has been at the forefront of the European Union member states seeking to exploit the momentum of monetary union to create a more unified and capable European Union political, defence, and security apparatus. The French electorate voted against ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty in May 2005, but the successor Treaty of Lisbon was ratified by Parliament in February 2008.

GEOGRAPHY

While Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe, France also has a number of territories in North America, the Caribbean, South America, the southern Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and Antarctica. These territories have varying forms of government ranging from overseas department to overseas collectivity.

Metropolitan France covers 547,030 square kilometres (211,209 sq mi), having the largest area among European Union members and slightly larger than Spain. France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the south-east, the Massif Central in the south-central and Pyrenees in the south-west. At 4,807 metres (15,771 ft) above sea-level, the highest point in Western Europe, Mont Blanc, is situated in the Alps on the border between France and Italy. Metropolitan France also has extensive river systems such as the Loire, the Garonne, the Seine and the Rhône, which divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the Camargue, the lowest point in France (2 m/6.56 ft below sea level). Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast.
The Exclusive Economic Zone of France extends over 11,000,000 km2 (4,000,000 sq mi) of ocean across the world.

France's total land area, with its overseas departments and territories (excluding Adélie Land), is 674,843 km2 (260,558 sq mi), 0.45% of the total land area on Earth. However, France possesses the second-largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,637 sq mi), approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world, just behind the United States (11,351,000 km2/4,382,646 sq mi) and ahead of Australia (8,232,000 km2/3,178,393 sq mi).

Metropolitan France is situated between 41° and 51° North, on the western edge of Europe, and thus lies within the northern temperate zone. The north and northwest have a temperate climate, while a combination of maritime influences, latitude and altitude produce a varied climate in the rest of Metropolitan France.In the south-east a Mediterranean climate prevails. In the west, the climate is predominantly oceanic with a high level of rainfall, mild winters and cool to warm summers. Inland the climate becomes more continental with hot, stormy summers, colder winters and less rain. The climate of the Alps and other mountainous regions is mainly alpine, with the number of days with temperatures below freezing over 150 per year and snow cover lasting for up to six months.

GOVERNMENT

Main articles: Government of France, Constitution of France, and Politics of France
Logo of the French Republic

The French Republic is a unitary semi-presidential republic with strong democratic traditions. The constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved by referendum on 28 September 1958. It greatly strengthened the authority of the executive in relation to parliament. The executive branch itself has two leaders: the President of the Republic, currently Nicolas Sarkozy, who is head of state and is elected directly by universal adult suffrage for a 5-year term (formerly 7 years), and the Government, led by the president-appointed Prime Minister, currently François Fillon.

The French parliament is a bicameral legislature comprising a National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) and a Senate. The National Assembly deputies represent local constituencies and are directly elected for 5-year terms. The Assembly has the power to dismiss the cabinet, and thus the majority in the Assembly determines the choice of government. Senators are chosen by an electoral college for 6-year terms (originally 9-year terms), and one half of the seats are submitted to election every 3 years starting in September 2008.

The Senate's legislative powers are limited; in the event of disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the final say, except for constitutional laws and lois organiques (laws that are directly provided for by the constitution) in some cases. The government has a strong influence in shaping the agenda of Parliament.

French politics are characterised by two politically opposed groupings: one left-wing, centred around the French Socialist Party, and the other right-wing, centred previously around the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) and now its successor the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The executive branch is currently composed mostly of the UMP.

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