Well, anything I write here is going to be totally overshadowed by the news that Jethro allegedly,
a) finished a race
and
b) did not hit anyone in the process!!! ( subject to official confirmation by the moderators
)
However.....
Contractural differences have been settled with the Glutbuckets, who have now resumed their pit crew/sabotage duties on my behalf. This long running dispute arose after I joined the Wazas and they did not consider the cleaning of my fundoshi, post race, to be related to their sphere of work.
I did have some sympathy for their position, when one considers what extreme excitement and sudden fright can do for one's bodily functions. But, considering that in return I often had to witness Mabel stripped to the waist, covered in grease and with her arms deep in the bowels of my engine on an almost daily basis I did not think that it was unfair.
My late arrival at Zandvoort was partly their fault ( well actually , entirely their fault!!) as Arnold Glutbucket had decided to make a detour via Amsterdam to see if he could get any "freelance" work for Mabel. That would not have been so bad ( as long as you were not the person being "freelanced" by Mabel) but whilst she was discussing terms he popped into a local cafe and bought some coffee and ( what he thought) fudge brownie. Things apparently got a little hazy from then on. Suffice it to say that, several Dutch law enforcement officers and several late night revellers are recovering in hospital after Arnold was apprehended for driving a Brabham through the red light district in his underpants and Mabel decided to liberate him from police custody.
It was remarkable that the car was in a fit state to drive but as always the Glutbuckets had used copious amounts of brown paper and string to patch things up away from the prying eyes of the scrutineers.
I certainly had no idea of the fragile state of the car as I set off for a warm up lap on full fuel!!! All seemed well so I dumped a load of fuel all over the next pit box
and set off to post a lap that put me in 3rd spot on the grid.
Meanwhile the Glutbuckets vanished only to reappear just as we were going to the grid saying " don't worry guv, everything is sorted" and Mabel was tucking a bolt into her cleavage ...shudder!!!.
Such a comment coming from them is always worrying, but it was not until much later that I realised what those two had been up to.
The start went well and I held 3rd spot into Tarzan behind Hristo and Gerard. Slowly our trio edged away from the pack and although I felt I could go a fraction quicker, I could not see a ( safe) way past Gerard's Eagle. The only obvious passing place at Zandvoort is into Tarzan and it was here about halfway into the race that I got a run on Gerard and squeezed up the inside, only for him to pull a similar move around the outside on the following lap. Our battle slowed us both and Hristo edged away.
I decided to stick behind Gerard and hope that we could get back to H, but as the race went on it seemed that the Eagle was suffering from lack of grip as Gerard seemed ever more sideways at certain points on the circuit.
I was just wondering why that might be, when his car decided to become a dune buggy and ploughed off into the sand at Hozenpoppengrut, it was then that I realised that the bolt the Glutbuckets had been waving at me on the grid was not actually from my car
, but may have been from the rear suspension of an Eagle??
This left me in clear air but by now too far behind Hristo with too few laps left to even attempt to catch him. So, it was a case of maintaining concentration and short shifting to get the baby Brabham home (and with an unsoiled fundoshi).