There I was, peering in, when the metal top fell off my pen and plopped into the tank. I gulped, knowing full well that we didn’t have time to take the engine out, remove the bottom of the oil tank and then reassemble it before qualifying. There was a coarse filter in the bottom of the oil tank, so we decided to risk running the car, praying that the lid would stay in the tank. Off went car and pencil top. It was nerve-wracking. If the filter in the bottom hadn’t protected the car, the pencil top would have been sucked into the pumps and destroyed them, and the engine would have been history.
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