History of a Lola T492 Sports 2000 chassis?

[Mike Harte]

When I raced, I never really worried too much about how the car looked; I always felt that it was more important how quickly it went.

However, the girlfriend of a clubmans' car, a Lotus 7 if I remember well, always made sure that after she had finished making his car spick and span, would come over to my car and give it a good polish. The girlfriend, who later married the driver, used to work at a restaurant/coffee bar that I helped manage so I actually met her before they got together.

We seemed to always be at the same meetings, and she always made a point of inspecting the car before I went to the collection area, and would check that all the fasteners were properly closed up, and that everything externally was ship-shape. A bit of a talisman, if you like. Of course, on one of the rare times that she wasn't around, nobody checked the car before I went out to practice, and so nobody noticed that the bonnet fasteners were undone. Result, one fibreglass bonnet went flying, luckily without damage to either the bonnet or the car.