Reply to "2017 Spa Classic in Pantera"

Drove home today. Could have visited the track again, but been there many times and frankly got to see all I wanted yesterday. Had a great day yesterday. Today I would just re-see everything, and of course there's no real racing going on. That you can follow. And some obligations back home ;-). Besides, this trip was more about the drive than the destination.

Woke up early, left 6:30, 850 km ahead. Took it easy, never above 150 km/h and found 3000-3500 rpm pleasurable. Traffic was fine, weather also. Sat there thinking about the number of components that could fail ;-)

No queues until Hamburg‎, then 5 km. With an engine cam'ed to 600HP, there's not much below 2000 rpm. I've found a nice 1000 idle, but moving the car, it prefers 2500 rpm. All in all, this engine is not constructed for highway queues in sunny weather. In and out of gear a few hundred times, hard work. My clutch is not painfully hard, but it's firm. Another challenge was the wiring I had done to get the car rolling Thursday. I had no thick wire, so the entire ignition current went through a thin wire, not good. So I used other ign current users sparingly all the trip. That meant no A/C of course, so hot inside. And I didn't turn on my manual coolant fan. The thermostat driven coolant fan of course came on, I couldn't control that. It rarely comes on but when going from highway speeds to standstill it does. WAD, I'd say.

So I was sitting there cursing at the queue wondering when the thin wire would burst. And since part of the queue used the emergency lane, I constantly looked at the grass to find a spot the Pantera could be pushed if failing, without ending in a ditch. But it all worked out, what a relief to get up to speed again, it felt like hours but on the GPS I only lost 25 min.

While in the queue the guy to my left rolled down his window and yelled: "Were you in Holl‎and this morning?" Yes. "You drove behind me." His hometown was where my hotel was, and then we met up 550 km later. "What are odds", he said? Indeed

Got to the ferry, and again, didn't follow instructions to go to middle lane, parked behind right lane, with space to spare.

When in Denmark an orange older 911 from Norway was right behind me, so I thought I would help him through Denmark. So drove a bit faster than I normally would have, and he followed behind me. We did that for approx 100 km, then I had to turn off the highway, so we waved goodbuy.