My parents taught me it’s rude to be late. It’s simply bad manners to leave someone waiting for you. As a consequence I always try to arrive on time, not just when I know that a friend is waiting for me, but also when I have to attend an event, such as a motor race. I’m proud to say that most of the time I do arrive on schedule. Unfortunately, however, I can’t always get to the designated place at the designated time.
Sometimes this is my own fault. For one thing, I tend to get lost. I once spectacularly drove past the main entrance to the Zolder Circuit without seeing it, only to realise that something was off after I’d already steered onto the freeway leading to Antwerp. I’m also guilty of not always getting up on time. I’m well aware that, if I want to be at the Nürburgring when the VLN qualifying start at 8.30h, I must get up at 4.30h and be in the car by 5.30h at the latest. And yet, and yet… doesn’t that snooze button seem appealing, even more so at 4.30h? Aaargh.
But sometimes I’m late through no fault of my own. Sometimes I’m simply late because the universe is playing a game and odd things just seem to mysteriously happen en route. For example, I once missed a part of the GT Masters practice because Circuitpark Zandvoort had forgotten to open the ticket booths. I also once arrived late to the start of an event in Assen because there was a cow standing in the middle of the road, causing a considerable traffic jam. And just last year my arrival to the Nordschleife was delayed because in a tiny Eifel village we caught the tail end of a crocodile. Not a real one, luckily. That would’ve been too much, after the whole cow-thing. No, this was a crocodile of cars. Promotion cars. Opel promotion cars, to be exact.
We didn’t notice anything odd was going on at first. We just turned a corner and found ourselves stuck behind a white Opel Astra. No big deal. It happens. Only then we turned another corner and we saw there was a red Opel Astra in front of the white Opel Astra. Okay. That’s odd, but coincidences happen! But then we turned a somewhat wider corner and caught sight of a blue Opel Astra in front of the red Opel Astra. Eh… huh?!
It wasn’t until we left the village that we got a proper view of the full crocodile. It was twenty Opel Astras long. It was also going very slowly so as not to lose anyone on the narrow Eifel roads and, whenever a gap inevitably fell in the line, the entire front part of the crocodile would halt, wait until the backmarkers had caught up, and then sloooooowly crawl back to its steady pace of 60km/h – on an 80km/h road, thank you very much. We had no choice but to follow the crocodile as patiently as we could, with as little swearing at the existence of Opels as we could possible manage.
By the time we finally made it to the track – a whopping twenty minutes later than planned – myself and everybody else in the car had seen more than enough of Opel Astra for the rest of our hopefully very long lives. So even though it was probably not Opel’s intention when it decided on its promotion campaign; I now know exactly which car I’m NOT going to buy in the future.