So where is the Australian government on Wayne Gardner’s long stay in a Japanese jail for a road rage incident where even the police say no punches were thrown?
Wayne evidently grabbed three Japanese gentlemen by the collar. For that he has spent two weeks in the lock-up and has been interrogated for two hours every day. The local coppers say they aren’t letting him out because he won’t plead guilty.
Our government used to like Wayne. They even gave him an Order of Australia because knighthoods had been abolished. Wayne was Australia’s first 500cc world championship motorcycle winner. He then drove four-wheel cars, ending his career as a works Toyota driver in Japan. Pity he hasn’t committed a serious crime because then our persons in Canberra would be throwing everything they had at getting him out.
Talking of serious, next week is the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival and Concours d’Elegance (“When you cease to dream you cease to live … Ten days: One Festival” … they are very creative in the head named after a hotel chain).
The fun and dreams start off with the Savannah Speed Classic which strangely enough is held in Savannah, the birthplace of grand prix racing in America. All the heavies in the racing world at the time flocked like seagulls after a chip to the first race in 1908 where 15,000 soldiers kept the fans from getting run over. Disappointingly it was won by a Fiat. There were three more years of racing where Fiat continued to dominate so they never raced again until 2008.
Then we move on to the Flights & Fancy Aeroport Gala with a very dangerous mix of vintage aircraft, live music, mouth-watering food and handcrafted cocktails and of course the Concours. Anyway that’s all fine, but why I will be there is for is the Auctions America auction. The car I’m after is the 2006 Ford GT Heritage edition. It’s only one of 343 made. Apart from a supercharged 5.4-litre, 410kw dual overhead cam V8, 0 to 100km/h in under four seconds and an original window sticker, this one is in the legendary Gulf colours. When it came out it was faster than the Porsche Carrera GT and Mercedes-McLaren SLR and set lap records at the Nurburgring. Mine for $420,000.
Then the week after it’s off to the Hilton Head of Australia, Canberra, for the Flynn collection auction. Now if you’re thinking Errol or Flynn of the inland you’d be dead wrong. This is Dr John Flynn, who, to quote the press release, was a “scholar of Indian history and a philanthropist who never married”.
John was in the rich mother business. His mum, Jean Marie Adams, was the heiress to the Tattersall’s sweepstakes and lotteries fortune. Just to fill in the missing bits of your education, Tattersall’s founder George Adams was a goldminer, butcher and hotelier before running sweepstakes on horse races. Naturally, just like today, religious groups shut his business down so he moved to Queensland where the local wowsers did the same thing, so he moved to Hobart. Don’t you love Tasmania?
Anyway when John Flynn wasn’t investigating Indians he was collecting cars. I’m sure Johnno was a top guy but collecting 60 classic Rover cars from the years 1949 to 1975 does raise some questions about how much time he spent on the subcontinent and whether malaria was involved. On the other hand, he did pick up a few classic American cars from the mid-1920s on. John did love spare parts too. Fourteen container loads will be going under the hammer. Slattery Auctions are running the auction.cadillac-chaffeur-v8-1Right now you’re saying to yourself or your loved one “what about the 24 Heures de LeMons?” Right now I am saying you don’t understand deadlines. Scrutineering was yesterday and the real racing starts today and goes through till tomorrow.
Commander in chief Sean Herbert had a facelift for the event courtesy of a driver who didn’t see his motorbike. The 1992 BMW Supercar has needed a bit of work apart from another brown snake inspection. Last night under the watchful supervisory eye of pit crew manager Phil (Nurburgring) Alexander, team electrician and Weekend Australian reader John McCallum did something mechanical which was very nice and involved oil running everywhere but didn’t make our Beemer go any quicker.
Please don’t ask about the rest of our team and pit crew. They came to Wakefield Park in what they called the team bus and said they needed to stop for Dr Cooper’s medicine along the way. This morning we still couldn’t understand what they were trying to say.
This is a shortened version of the original story, read the rest at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/motoring/japanese-hot-around-collar-after-wayne-gardner-road-rage/news-story/dc2004ef75b14d1d6c045be1f4591bc2
