John’s job is the ‘pits’!

Driver Hire York driver, John Gledhill,landed himself an interesting job when he was asked to take a Maserati GTMC GT4 to Zandvoort motor racing circuit in Holland where the car was competing in the European GT4 championships.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) depending on how you look at it, John didn’t actually have to drive the car which is worth around £100k. It was carefully loaded onto a car transporter belonging to its owners Ebor-GT, before John made the journey to Hull and then the ferry for Holland.

Things got more interesting on arrival at Zandvoort as John explains: “The Ebor-GT team couldn’t get me in to watch the racing, so they offered me a ‘pit lane pass’, which I thought would be the next best thing. What I hadn’t realised is that the pit room is protected by a large concrete wall. Whilst I could hear the cars, I didn’t see any actual racing for the three days I was there. Ebor GT have a female mechanic which is very unusual in the motor-racing world. The job she gave me wasn’t the most technical – I had to remove the dustcaps from the tyre valves when the car came in for a change of drivers, so she could check the pressures.”

In the event, John’s tyre valve dust cap removing skills weren’t called on. Mind you, John, who’s 67 years old and spent 45 years as an HGV driver, must have brought the team good luck. The Maserati GTMC was piloted to victory by drivers Charlie Fagg and Phil Glew. It was Charlie’s 18th birthday, so a double celebration ensued.

Adrian Snook, who is head of Ebor-GT, and a former racing driver himself, was understandably delighted with the Zandvoort result: “We won at Spa in Belgium the previous week, so we’re having a great season. We’ve been using Driver Hire for a couple of years because they always provide us with good reliable people.”