Down the years

Down the years I have done my best to solve readers’ motor racing puzzles. Will they now solve one for me? Long ago I was given a nice framed 18×11 in painting of a Honda leading a wet F1 race. It had been intended as a cover picture for a model car magazine but was never so used. The leading car is No.18, followed by a red (no7) and a blue car. Perhaps it was a practice picture, I thought, but discarded this, as an artist usually depicts a race scene. Surely it was of Surtees, second to Icicx’s Ferrari in the very wet 1968 Rouen GP? Honda raced in Fl from 1964 to 1967, their most successful driver being John Surtees. But his race number was 7, I believe. But wasn’t Richie Ginther allocated No 18? The weather was very kind to races at this period, the only wet ones being at Spa in 1965 and at Zandvoort and Rouen in 1968. So I am inclined to think the painting, initialled “LB”, is of Ginther at Spa, although he was only sixth. Fl art is not my scene but if anyone is intrigued…