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The whole object of building the car was that it had to be finished & driven in the Six Hour Race at Spa in September 2005.
All I could think about was gettingh it to the ferry, not what needed to be done the other side of the channel, never mind we unexpectedly picked up the right person.
We drove throughout the night on Wednesday 21/09/05 to reach Spa, Kiwi Paul & James Hipwell went with Andrew Sharp in the Jeep Cherokee towing Andrews's Porche 928, Jean Moss & I towing the DB2, 8 EMU behind our Citroen Relay Van
When we got on the ferry Kiwi Paul got his pint & went and sat down away from the other 4 of us, we thought miserable bugger.
We carried on during the very early morning with heavy fog all the way up the French & VBelgian coast & onwards into mainland Belgium with Jean driving and me sleeping, too knackered to drive, anyway I woke up at one point & said to Jean 'aren't we going a bit fast' , she said just go back to sleep which is what I dId.
Another hour or 2 went by then the phone rang, Andrew Sharp said to Jean 'is he awake', I just woke when the phone rang, 'can he read maps' Andrew said, 'of course' said Jean, 'where are we' said Andrew, I said I wouldn't know as I had been asleep, I joined Andrew with the maps & Kiwi Paul sat shotgun with Jean, after driving down the motorway I worked out where we were & returned us to the right road to the town of Spa Francorchamps.
As we entered the town we lost Jean, Kiwi Paul & the DB2 as they managed to turn off the motorway at a different junction, once we had gathered them up we located the circuit by asking a few Belgians, at first we asked the wrong question then we struck lucky after about our 5th attempt.
From memory we arrived at about 5.30/6 AM just as the sun was coming up behind the pits & grandstand on Thursday morning 22nd at the car park near Eau Rouge, we were thunderstruck by the view.
Anyway after looking around for a few minutes we then settled down in all four vehicles to get some sleep. Andrew took the front seat of the Jeep.
I took the race seat in the Porsche, I think Jean slept in the van & James went on a wander round, Kiwi Paul took the rear seat in the Jeep.
About 9am everyone else started to arrive, we unloaded both cars, leaving the trailers outside the circuit, the Porsche 928 was based in the outer paddock anyway & the DB2 in the Six Hour pits on the right just before Eau Rouge inside the circuit.
We drove the DB2 into the circuit under the tunnel, turned left and went down to our pit no. 40 for which we had the documentation before we set out, the van came in via the two gates at Eau Rouge.
Andrew, the two Marks & I went to sign on (I was down to share the 928 with Andrew in a 1hr enduro) whilst Jean cooked the breakfast.
We didn't realise that we had to share the pit !
We found the other car in our pit were going to work out of their truck so all was well for the moment, time to get down to business.
Kiwi Paul gathered us round & gave us our jobs for the event, turns out he was a Touring Car series & Rally circuit mechanic in NZ & Oz & worked for drivers such as Paul Radisich on Mondeo's, he had left his BMW laser driveshaft alignment tool in Argentina, he was our secret weapon & thats what he had been thinking about on the ferry !
We checked the car over and took it up to the scrutineering bay / area with trepidation as Jeremy Hall who hated Feltham Aston Martin's with a vengeance was one of them, from memory we managed to get another scrutineer to view the car & our FIA papers, the we took the car back to pit 40 & our lunch.
Whilst we were getting the car scrutineered the Aston Martin Racing banner was hung above the car working area.
1st thing after a lunch on the move we put the car in the middle of our pit, jacked it up & put it 4 standsthen took the wheels off
We gave the car its final check over, I had taken our laptop with a checklist on it, re-fitted the wheels, dropped it off the stands ready for 1st practice, the two Marks had never driven the DB2 anywhare !
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