Why Le Mans magic will miss a crucial ingredient in 2020

It was the news we'd all been dreading. My heart sank when it was announced on Monday that the Le Mans 24 Hours in September will take place behind closed doors, without a crowd, minus spectators, in front of empty grandstands. Describe it how you like, the harsh reality is that the event will be robbed of the atmosphere that, well, makes it Le Mans.

The French endurance classic has an all-encompassing ambiance like no other race, certainly not one I've attended. A crowd that can top 300,000 spread around a track measuring eight and half miles is the reason for that. A visit to Le Mans is an assault on the senses. It's not just about what you see, but what you hear, smell and feel. It is a visceral experience.

I can't get a whiff of sizzling bacon when I'm out in the open without thinking about Le Mans early on Sunday morning. It's a mental trigger that transports my mind straight to the Circuit de la Sarthe and the world's greatest endurance race. The smell of bacon and the sound of whirring airguns are somehow hardwired together deep inside my brain.

There's so much I'll miss at Le Mans this year, presuming that in these troubled times I'll actually be able to get there — and back — for the rescheduled race on 19/20 September. Fingers crossed I'll make it for what will be my 30th visit.

That includes the trips out to watch the cars around the circuit: the jaunt down to Indianapolis and Arnage, taking in some frites and perhaps a cheeky beer; sitting on the bank at the Esses or on the inside of Tertre Rouge; and definitely getting as close as possible to the fence on the outside of the corner that leads onto the Mulsanne Straight.

Even if I am able to get out to watch the cars in September, and I'm not confident I will, it won't be the same if I'm not standing shoulder to shoulder with like-minded individuals doing the same as me. Watching, listening and smelling, just taking it all in.

I might curse the crowds each June, but they are part and parcel of the whole Le Mans experience. I secretly enjoy the jostling — and the jostling back even more.

But the greatest loss for me next month from a sensory perspective will be the lack of that atmosphere on the start-finish straight as the clock ticks down towards the start of the race. It makes me feel ill, but that gut-churning sense of expectation and excitement help makes Le Mans special for me.

I had some idea of what to expect when I first visited Le Mans as a journalist in 1990. I was already intrigued by the event when I watched a BBC documentary about the race some time early in 1982 as a 14-year-old. It was a flavour-filled compare-and-contrast take on the efforts of two very different — or so said the film — British drivers and their campaigns at the 24 Hours the previous year.

Guy Edwards, racing a Lola-Cosworth T600 for the GRID team, was cast as the slick, briefcase-carrying modern professional, his rival, Alain de Cadenet, the plucky stamp-collecting amateur with a car bearing his own name that had been put together in a central London mews garage. Only one of them was filmed wearing a tracksuit in the scenes showing their preparation for the big race, and it wasn't the driver of the De Cadenet-Lola LM.

Take away the crowd, and it goes a long way down the road to becoming just another motor race

I got to watch the film again four or five years back when it popped up on BBC iPlayer, and you can find it all in chunks on YouTube. The line from de Cad asking whether his friend and rival knew "the difference between a burgundy and a claret" made me laugh, but it was the atmospheric shots of the campsites, the fairground, the village on the inside of the Dunlop Curve (no chicane, then, of course) and the old pits and paddock that made me realise why I fell in love with Le Mans in the first place.

Le Mans had changed a bit by the time I showed up for the first time. The fairground was slightly less edgy than in the film, though not the altogether more tame affair that it is today. The village of shops, restaurants and bars was still a charismatic bustle of sound and noise, not the shadow of its former self that it has become.

But for all the changes to the fabric of the place in the 30 years since I started attending, Le Mans still retains a magic all of its own. Take away the crowd, and it goes a long way down the road to becoming just another motor race, though admittedly a 24-hour enduro taking part on a classic circuit that bears no relation to anything else on the international calendar today. The 88th edition of the big race is not going to be the same.