The grandstands are still waiting

We drove from Épernay on a Tuesday. The vineyards give way to farmland, and then, without warning, a set of concrete grandstands appears on the right-hand side of the road. Painted advertisements from 1966 — Esso, Martini, Ferrari — still cling to the walls, faded but insisting.

Nobody was there. A tractor passed. A crow. The main straight is now a departmental road, and cars use it as a shortcut. If you stand on the paddock side and close your eyes, you can almost hear Fangio.

This is what ANEMOIA is for. Not to bring the past back, but to notice that it never fully left.