On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 01:53:48PM +0100, Steve Cottrell wrote: > Nice shots Larry - thanks for posting! That Europa is a rare beast.
When I first saw one of those it wasn't actually a Europa - it was a Lotus 47 (which is an even rarer beast). This was the competetion version, painted in "Gold Leaf Team Lotus" livery, which was being raced at Brands Hatch on the following weekend (by Jackie Oliver if my memory is to be trusted, which is by no means guaranteed). This was very early on in the history of this variant - in fact it may well have been the debut race. Fortunately for me Lotus wanted to keep the car out of the public eye, and so chose to garage it for a day or two a couple of miles away from the track at a garage where I sometimes worked weekends (pumping fuel, checking oil levels, etc.) Rather more publicly visible on the forecourt that weekend (this was not the race weekend - it was the weekend before) was a GT40 which had ended up there when the transporter carrying it had broken down. One of the cars I filled up that weekend was a rather nice black car with a badge I didn't recognise (Iso Grifo - not exactly a common sight; there were probably less than 50 of them in existence at that time). The driver wandered over to look at the GT40. I remarked that there was something even more unusual behind the doors to the service bay, to which he replied that he was aware of that - he was organizing the race on the next weekend! "Got any free tickets?" I joked. "Sure", he replied. I thought he was continuing the joke when he dug around in the glove compartment for a while, then turned back to me empty-handed and said "sorry; I don't seem to have any with me today". Then a thought struck him, and he reached back into the car. "Will this do?" he said, handing me a mechanic's full weekend pass. Needless to say it did very well - admission to the track, and paddock for the whole weekend, and pit lane access for everything except the actual race. But it also allowed me to watch the race from the mechanic's grandstand at turn 1. I guess the joke was on me! P.S. The GT40 owner eventually gave up waiting for the replacement transporter to arrive, and drove the car the two miles up the the public road to the track. -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
