Here is a post of Danes, (March 09) that I found on another site. http://forums.autosport.com/topic/10...an-club/page-2
At one Finnish GP Siggi Schauzu used the long straight road between the circuit (which was actually closed-off public roads) and the Russian border as a test road for his sidecar outfit. The road was about 5 miles long and as straight as a die. Well, the Russians saw this silver bullet-like affair hurtling down the road towards them at the first of the border posts and actually shot at him... He came back to the paddock very shaken and showing us the scars on his fairing where the bullets had hit at an angle.
A funnier thing I remember about the GP in Finland are the "burning bogs". The toilets in the paddock were simply two 3ftx3ft wooden boxes (no doors, so I got a local spectator whom we knew from previous years to bring a couple of old sheets and nails and I made "doors" out of them) and a hole in the ground. Of course having over 150 riders plus their mechanics and other team members use them.. well the holes got filled up pretty quickly so you had to be careful where you stood. The floor was covered with crumpled up newspapers as "protection". Well, on the Sunday, after the race, Barry Sheene came round asking for petrol donations, just a few drops per team. 30 minutes later the loos were up in flames.
When the police (who were there all the time for some reason) made inquiries, we were all standing around and another of the most famous riders said, po-faced: "Well, I saw one of the police go in to the toilet smoking a cigarette. When he came out he didn't have the cigarette any more and the loos were suddenly in flames. Perhaps he dropped it on the newspapers on the floor...." I remember the policeman, the only one who spoke English, looking at him and waving his finger at him to and fro, saying "nooo, nooo, nooo"...
I actually have a newspaper cutting in my album, with a pic of the loos on fire, which our friend the spectator mentioned above sent me, together with a translation.
Must get back to my numismatics - I am currently translating a book on a certain type of ancient coinage, plus doing the last 100 coin identifications for a "coin ID customer" then adding more coins to wildwinds.com
So bye for the moment !
Dane
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