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The next day our Diesel Power d3 came into its own. We left the Ray Juan Carlos hotel in Barcelona with a full tank of fuel and headed for the Paul Ricard Test Circuit, 350 miles away in southern France at the front of the pack. No fuel stops on the way and arrived at the track in 2nd well actually we where 1st as the guys in the 360 Spider Gumball No.149 left early at 7 o'clock in the morning. Paah! |
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Kim Schmitz arrived a little bemused in the 'CL3000' with his position and promptly left for Cannes. We hung around as we were expecting a few laps of the track followed by lunch, but left when we found that it was to be 1 lap behind a PACE CAR! Wtf? Boring! No Fun, Pace what now? And off we went, still on the same tank of fuel from Barcelona and still had almost half a tank left, we left for The Final Run To Cannes. |
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Now, we figured on the way that there was only Kim infront and that we had to beat him, full stop. We pressed on and planned to find a local closer by, pay him some money to navigate us straight to the finish gate missing all the traffic. We pulled off the motorway and stumbled upon a biker on a Kawasaki ZX9R. We explained, Rally, Race, We're in, Help? Carlton Intercontinental Hotel, You know? And off we went following a nutter local on a bike, in a car! Yep a few finger waving manoeuvres were called for. As we got on the promenade, it was 2 lanes of traffic either side with planters in the centre. We had it sussed. Every so often there would be a van parked up in the 1st lane unloading for the film festival that weekend and the queuing cars left a 300 foot space every time to filter into the next lane early. The biker comes into his own here, he simply rides down, stops the traffic, leaves a space and we jump in, excellent! He then filters to the next one and does the same, we simply drive down and jump in again and again. Until we find Kimble and his CL3000! We then tell our biker buddy to stop Kim and he obliges, we filter past and are in P1 once more for the finish 200 yards up on the other side of the road where we have to go past the hotel, u-turn and drive through the final finish gate. As Kim could not move cars out of the way, we thought we had it in the bag! Until we hear a horn, lots of commotion and see people diving left and right on the promenade out of Kim's way as he hurtles through the pedestrians! Through the finish gate went the German and his CL3000. He's there 1st and got the final P1, we got another bloody P2! End of Rally, no more chances well, not until 2005! |
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2004 Gumball 3000 and 2005 entrants. BMW Diesel Power #097 |
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