Before flying out to Imola for the San Marino Grand Prix, Robert Doornbos endured one of the less exciting aspects of the job of Red Bull test driver on Wednesday, putting in some straight-line work at Santa Pod, the rather dilapidated drag strip used by some F1 teams for such routine jobs.
It was a far cry from his rather higher profile Friday running on Grand Prix weekends, but it comes with the territory. Not that Doornbos would ever complain - like his senior teammate David Coulthard, he's an amiable, easygoing fellow to whom good manners are paramount.
The Doornbos story has a fairy tale quality to it, because he fulfilled the sort of dream that so many of us had as youngsters, and proved that you can still make it to F1 without sitting in a kart at the age of five or six.