Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [49]
As the race approaches, tension builds. I meet the drivers in the garage – can you imagine this happening in prima donna Fl? – and what an unlikely pairing they are. John Bintcliffe is small, stocky and bounces around like an excited schoolboy. Frank Biela is lanky and languid, lurking around with a permanent hunted expression on his face, probably because he's usually having a crafty fag where he shouldn't.
When the pit lane opens, half an hour before the start, the excitement palpably intensifies. It's been declared a wet race, allowing us to switch from slicks to wets but not the other way. So we're out on the grid on slicks, hoping. The sky gleams like mercury, but the track is merely damp. Not damp enough. Almost at the instant the first drop hits my face the cry for wets goes up and the world goes mad.
Air tools rattle like small-arms fire; the single big nut on each axle spins; wheels fly in all directions. My job is to roll the slicks across the grass and heave them over the pit wall to waiting arms. The knack is to get the wheel rolling, give it a bounce and then tip it over the wall like a volleyball. At my first attempt I was run over by my own wheel.
I watch the start from a trackside box, the cubbyhole full of computers and telly screens where you expect to see Frank Williams looking po-faced. Beavis and Butthead streak away from 9th and 12th and arrive at the first corner first and second, but I don't really notice this as I'm busy scanning the now deserted grid for signs of the propshaft. And it's Biela ... from Bintcliffe ... with Al-ain Me-nu in the Renault some way off but looking dangerous. It stays like that, thanks to steady rain, until the last half of the last lap, when that lunatique Menu pips Bintcliffe. But first and third is Audi's best result for ages and there's much rejoicing over lunch of mixed grill in a bun.
But the weather's improving, which means it's getting worse as far as we're concerned. For race two, a decision is made to change the spring rates on both cars, a job which, with the aid of an air-driven spring/damper compressor, takes a tad over 20 minutes. In the tumult of ratcheting, banging and hissing of air, I fail to make any contribution whatsoever. Just as I reach out to pass a tool or spring, it disappears in a flash before my eyes, whisked away by sleight of practised hand, with the result that I just wobble around the car permanently half a second behind the proceedings. But I do manage to change some wheels, mop water from the cockpit and wax both cars again.
Then I put the fuel in. It comes in a huge plastic barrel with a sort of spring-loaded bung on the end. This is up-ended over a self-sealing filler in the A4's boot. Press down and the fuel just glugs in. Cock it up, though, and you'd fill your boots with petrol. A few blokes stand well within arms' length for this bit.
For the race, I'm elected to the board – Biela's pit board, that is. One bloke fills in the time and lap details from a huge box of letters and numbers, and I hold it out as he streaks past. I remember this race as a series of small numbers. Each lap, the man on the stopwatches turns with ashen face and yells in my colleague's ear. He then reaches into the numbers box, sometimes for a higher digit, sometimes a lower one. In my clammy-handed excitement I almost drop the board over the wall. It has happened, apparently.
But the track