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Hazard Level: CriticalThe Sarthe Spicy Sausage Sh!ts™ are a real threat to your race weekend. Indulge at your own risk. Map the permanent toilets (like those at Karting) and avoid the Portaloos at all costs! |
🌶️ The Merguez Warning
There is a spicy red sausage at Le Mans. It is called merguez. It is grilled on open braziers at every campsite, every food van and every corner of the circuit. It smells incredible. It tastes incredible. It will be offered to you repeatedly, at all hours, often by people who have been drinking since Wednesday.
You will eat one. Then another. Then, because there are always some left over and it seems a shame to waste them, you will finish the rest of the plate.
This is a mistake. A wonderful, unavoidable, completely foreseeable mistake.
What actually happens
The merguez will feel fine on Friday night. Saturday morning you will feel fine. Saturday afternoon, approximately 90 minutes before the start of the race, standing at Tertre Rouge in 30 degree heat with 200,000 other people, you will feel considerably less fine.
Your body will send you a message. The message will be urgent. The nearest toilet will be a long drop with a queue of thirty people outside it and no toilet paper.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. This has happened and the story has lived on. In 1998 a story was born and it remains one of the greatest pieces of Le Mans writing ever committed to the internet. This page is thankful to the writer of that story.
📖 Required Reading: The Socks Story
Before you go to Le Mans. Before you eat the merguez. Before you do anything else — read this.
It is a first-hand account of a 1998 Le Mans debut, the red sausages, a long-drop toilet, and a solution to a toilet paper shortage that nobody should ever have to employ.
WARNING ADULT CONTENT
The Beermountain Merguez Protocol
We are not telling you not to eat the merguez. That would be unreasonable and you would ignore us anyway. We are simply asking you to follow a few basic guidelines:
- One Imodium per merguez. This is not a joke. Treat it like a pairing recommendation.
- Eat it in a baguette. Never alone. The bread is load-bearing.
- Do not eat the leftover ones. There is a reason the veterans left them.
- If you need to go, go immediately. There is never a better time. It will not get better. It will get worse.
- Always carry toilet paper. In your pocket. In your bag. On your person at all times. At worst you won't use it. At best you will go home with the same number of socks you arrived with.
- Do not eat six of them at 3am. You have been warned by someone who learned this the hard way in 1998 and still talks about it.
🥖 The Merguez Américaine — Peak Le Mans Cuisine
Now that we've covered the warning, it is only fair to tell you about the pinnacle of Le Mans street food.
The Merguez Américaine is not a subtle dish. It is a small baguette, split open, filled with merguez sausages, and then — and this is the important part — loaded with frites on top. Chips. In the baguette. On top of the spicy sausages. All of it together, wrapped in paper, handed to you by someone who has been standing next to a hot grill since 4am.
It is extraordinary. It is the best thing you will eat all weekend. It will absolutely destroy you if you are not careful.
The Merguez Américaine is typically found at the food vans near the main campsite entrances and around the Mulsanne bus stop area, usually from late evening onwards. The queue is always worth it. The Imodium protocol applies with extra emphasis.
🏆 Beermountain Special Commendation
The Merguez Américaine is one of the truly great Le Mans experiences. Seek it out. Eat it once. Then refer back to this page.
🥗 A Note for Vegetarians
If you don't eat meat, or you're trying to pace yourself through the merguez situation, there is good news.
Vegetarian merguez — plant-based sausages seasoned with the same North African spice blend — are available in most French supermarkets near the circuit, including Carrefour and Intermarché. They are genuinely good. They look the part, they smell the part, and crucially, they are considerably less likely to result in a frantic search for a toilet block at 3am.
Pick some up during your supermarket run, grill them on the campsite, serve in a baguette, and tell no one. The Beermountain Merguez Protocol still applies — the bread is still load-bearing — but the risk level is substantially reduced.
Note: vegetarian merguez will not help you relate to the Socks Story on a personal level. This is probably for the best.
✅ The Checklist (print this out)
- Toilet roll — in your bag, every day, no exceptions
- Imodium — at least one per day you intend to eat merguez
- Awareness of the nearest toilet block at all times
- The knowledge that queues will be longer than you think
- A spare pair of socks (just in case)
The Socks Story was written by an author unkown and describes events from the 1998 Le Mans 24 Hours. It has been shared on Beermountain and many other groups. It is essential reading for anyone attending Le Mans for the first time — ideally before, rather than after, their first encounter with the merguez van. If the author would get in touch we would be most please to give the credit to him this story deserves.
Read the full story here →
