Just to give the other side of the story, I have to admit that the 'team' I worked with were without doubt the worst I've ever experienced...
No spares at all, except for one engine which hadn't even been run and which I wasn't allowed to fit during practice on Friday.
Luckily, the engine which was in the car proved to be a good one after I'd set it up and got hold of some replacement jets for the bl##ming Weber carb, which was only managing 16mpg during practice.
One of the few pieces of advice I gave which was heeded was to respect a rev limit of just over 6,000 rpm, with the aim being to minimise the chances of engine problems.
That did pay off, with the only engine problem being water getting into the carb bowl _through_ the air filter during that spell of torrential rain.
Anyway, the car was third? fastest on the track once the race got under way, getting as high as 2nd place for a short time around the halfway stage even though it still needed refuelling every 90 minutes, before the inevitable happened.
When I say inevitable, the point is that even with the best preparation something will go wrong, as proven by the engine problem Tete Rouge suffered in the opening lap.
It's not a matter of 'if', more a matter of 'when', with the team's capability of addressing the problem as speedily as possible being the deciding factor in who drops rapidly down the slope or who manages to claw their way back up again.
Poor race preparation, no workbench, no catering facilities not even a kettle for making a hot drink, toolboxes full of imperial spanners and junk tools determined which way car 45 would go.
After being asked to help out with spannering, it was a bit of a shock to find that I was also expected to act as team manager and that the other 'mechanic' had never even lifted the bonnet of a 2CV.
'Team manager' meant taking the blame when some of the driver change slips which I'd filled in and handed to various marshals never managed to make it back to race control, btw.
I suppose that I'm not too unhappy to find out that the Ohlins damper, which was destroyed when the M12 bolt holding it to the chassis fell out onto the track, retails at around £2,500.
When asked what to do about that, my suggestion that they pop next door to pit 17 and have a word with the chap from(
e) whom the chassis had been purchased didn't go down all that well.
Despite all this, even a 36 hour spell without sleep and so missing out on the Dutch partytime, it was great to see so many friends again and enjoy their cameraderie, goodwill and banter.
Guess that means, 'same place, same time, next year'?
ken.
