Roads in Shanghai are chaotic at any time of the day, but on a Friday night it can descend into mayhem. For Steve Cooper from Autosport, James Roberts from F1 Racing, noted gun for hire Tom Clarkson and this autosport.com correspondent, what had been a good run in a taxi from the track had come to a grinding halt in a traffic jam not far from the city. Cars were banking up on the approach to a set of toll booths near the end of the motorway, and nobody was going anywhere fast.
Or so it seemed. Just as the journos were resigning themselves to a long wait, a set of flashing lights appeared behind them. A police car barrelled past, followed by a late-model Honda van that it was attempting to escort through the random jumble of cars driven by folk with scant regard for such formalities as lane markers.
A peer through the windows of the Honda revealed the occupant of the back seat to be one Rubens Barrichello. And with the barest minimum of encouragement from his passengers, the cab was soon giving chase.
The taxi driver's performance was, frankly, one of the best drives of the entire weekend. Showing a spacial awareness that would put some on the F1 grid to shame, he stayed glued to the back of the escorted Honda, dove through shrinking gaps, shut the door on other would-be opportunists and, memorably, even managed to overtake both the Honda and the police car and leave them boxed in behind a bus.
It was a magical performance; one given with what appeared to be complete disregard for the possible legal ramifications of having just tucked himself in behind a police escort for a mile ? and then overtaken it. Still, one flash of inspired recklessness had wiped out what would have been at least a 15-minute wait in the gridlock.
There were the obvious one-liners in the back of the cab ("Good start to the weekend for Rubens ? his Honda has just been blown off by a taxi"), but soon enough the escorting party caught up and the journos were able to attract Barrichello's attention.
A call of "Thanks for the tow, Rubens!" was met by some loud heckling in Portuguese from the Honda, followed by an attempt to empty a bottle of water over Clarkson from a distance of several feet. Unsurprisingly, Barrichello missed and got the taxi driver instead.
Barrichello and his escort entered the tollbooth moments later (where, it was noted, both he and the police car were forced to stop and pay!) leaving the bewildered taxi driver wondering why a shrieking man in a van had thrown water all over him "That man was Rubens Barrichello. F1 driver. Grand Prix," offered Roberts helpfully.
The cab driver stared uncomprehendingly for a moment before the realisation dawned. "He? Rubens Barrichello? Ah!" He looked at where the van had been, but by now it was long gone. Shortly afterwards, the cab reached its destination, leaving its driver pondering his wet clothes and unexpected brush with fame, and four journos marvelling at his superb performance behind the wheel.
And the cabbie wouldn't even accept a tip.
