by Ben Collins
We all got changed in a spare blue-carpeted room inside the race control building. If only the ladies could have tuned into my view of the boys squeezing into their tight-fitting Nomex underwear. It made the Top Gun shower scene look like a cold bath.
May was hopping around on one leg, trying not to fall over; Jeremy’s suit was four inches too short, and Hammo was turning blonder by the second.
Hammond was rightly concerned that he barely knew the track. ‘I can’t even remember which one is Hangar straight. I go past the pits, then it’s just … a blur …’
I handed him a circuit map with the gears, so he could memorise them and talk each lap through as he went.
‘Right. What do I do if someone wants to get past, move over?’
‘No. Hold your line and sod everyone else. They will find a way around you. Oh, and you must ditch your surfing necklace, and none of you should chew gum out there.’
‘All right, Daaad.’
Choking on gum was an unlikely cause of death, but mentioning it put them in the right frame of mind. Racing was real.
The night session was a wake-up call for them. Having fuelled their bodies with Walkers crisps and Diet Coke, they took turns to excavate Silverstone’s gravel traps.
Jeremy’s grin became a more poker-faced affair as he climbed into the BM and ran off a few night laps. I then slipped on my helmet, black visor and all, and, much to Jezza’s amazement, knocked three seconds off our time. We were now 42nd on the grid.
Race day brought the ultimate test of endurance and mind discipline: the driver’s briefing. The only useful information I ever received in one of these marathons was in Australia for the great race at Bathurst, where they explained the warning flags for the 180mph straight: ‘A single waved yellow flag means there is a kangaroo near the track. Two waved yellows means he’s on the track.’
Silverstone’s Clerk of the Course read the Motor Sports Association Book of Psalms to the 200 assembled drivers. Fortunately The Stig was able to sleep through the dull moments with no one the wiser. Whilst the cameras rolled on the presenters sitting next to me, I stole forty winks.
Steve’s mechanics had to whip out the engine after it had crapped itself when they warmed it up that morning. The clock was ticking. If we were too late joining, we would be barred from competing at all.
Contrived TV fakery? No, it was genuine twenty-four-carat chaos.
The boys slammed home a new unit in record time. A cloud of black diesel smoke belched from the exhaust; the beast was alive and kicking. With only twenty seconds to spare, I booted it out of the garage to start the race from the pit lane exit, dead last but one.
I managed to overtake a few people but it was hardly the stuff of Stig legend, until fate stepped in. The heavens opened. Some drivers came in for wet tyres and I smoked them by holding out on slicks. The rest of the field slowed down considerably and I carved them up like Christmas turkeys.
Truthfully, it was the first time during the whole weekend that my heart rate had risen above its nocturnal state. Driving on slicks in the wet made the BMW super-sensitive. It gripped, but would suddenly let go as though it were on ice. It was all about precision and feel; every input was critical and you drove every second of every lap, just as racing should be. My stint got us past over twenty cars and into contention for a class win.
As we settled into the night my respect for the presenters grew and grew. Sharing the changing room with them, helping them with their helmets and safety gear, I realised just how little they knew about racing, and how fearful, excited and passionate they really were.
Jeremy was glued to the results screen the whole way through the race. James looked increasingly haggard. His eyes were puffy from sleep deprivation and his face was as white as a sheet. Their lap times went up and down like a bride’s nightie as they strained to navigate each circuit the same way twice.
Hammond got stuck into his night stint and I monitored from the pit wall, telling him his times and keeping him going. The human contact was vital and his pace dropped noticeably when I stopped talking.
He was taking the line I’d taught him on the Hangar straight, crossing from right to left, across the front of a car he was overtaking to line up for Stowe. A much heavier, faster GT2 Mosler sliced between them and crashed into Hammond’s left side at a good 140mph.
‘Guys, I’ve binned it,’ he said over the radio.
The impact broke the BMW’s wheels and suspension, crumpled the bodywork and killed the engine. It was the last thing any of us wanted to see happen to Hammond.
He stayed in the car as they dragged it back to our pit and was understandably shaken, so the cameras laid off him. Typically, Hammo’s primary concern was for the car that had hit him. I soon put him right on that.
Steve’s merry crew swivelled their baseball caps and tucked in. Nearly three hours later I went out and drove pretty much all through the night. I kept awake by chatting to Steve and getting him to wind up Jeremy by saying that I’d pissed in the seat. Hours felt like days.
The field was too strung out to pass anyone until another gift landed in my lap. Fog descended over the circuit, and soon it was like swimming through pea soup. Visibility was zero and it was easy to drive off on the straights, which seemed longer as you counted the seconds until the corners.
We were so far behind that it seemed reasonable to take some silly risks. I overtook as many cars as I could; some were pootling along at 40mph. Their fear was our opportunity to claw back lost time. I revelled in the conditions; it was licensed madness. When it became impossible to see past the windscreen the race was stopped for safety reasons.
They re-started it several hours later when the fog had thinned a bit and, at Jeremy’s suggestion, poor James was sent out into oblivion. The rules required the presenters to drive a minimum percentage of the race, otherwise I could have done the lot for them. James was cautious, but even at a fraction of my pace he fired through the gravel trap a few times. Jeremy talked at him on the pit-to-car radio the whole time: ‘Drive faster … Slow down, save the tyres … More speed James …’ and so on. If that didn’t encourage him to get to the end, nothing would.
I slept on the floor for a total of two hours. I could sleep anywhere as long as my head was higher than my chest and my knees were bent for circulation.
The morning after, the presenters looked like zombies. Their driving styles were overloading the front tyres, chewing the rubber down to the wire cords, so we kept a careful eye on them as they ran their final stints on autopilot.
James’s body was present but his mind had long since gone home and was waiting for the rest to catch up. He stared vacantly across the garage, fondling an empty teacup. Hammond had the giggles and was banging out pieces to camera, his spirits lifted again. Jeremy was running on a kind of delusional overdrive and had turned a mysterious shade of purple. He brought the car home and I take my hat off to him – he’d managed a running commentary through nearly every single lap he’d driven throughout the race.
I was extremely proud when they eventually crossed the line, third in class. That the BMW finished at all was a miracle.
Georgie – equally miraculously – held on to her waters and I hightailed it home. Forty-eight hours later, she started contractions. It was time to become a dad.
Attending the birth was not the ‘mystical experience’ I’d heard it described as by new-age men in the media. It looked pretty damn awful to me, but the conclusion was magical. A determined little girl wrapped me around her finger on Day One and I drove our new family home comfortably below the speed limit.
As for my racing career, my recently acquired knowledge of the Square Mile wasn’t helping me raise the finance needed to run a go-kart race, let alone a NASCAR campaign, but I kept my radar on.
I’d started writing for Autosport magazine, reviewing new and exciting racing cars. Out of the blue, they sent me to Orlando, Florida, to drive Red Bull’s top-flight NASCAR at Lakeland Speedway. It w
as a dream ticket.
The last British hopeful who went to the States hunting for a NASCAR test was British Touring Car Champion Jason Plato. They welcomed him with a little southern hospitality.
Introduced to the legendary Dale Earnhardt in the pits, Jason waxed lyrical about the prospect of joining the series. Dale never took off his wraparound sunglasses and his moustache barely moved as he drawled, ‘This here racin’ ain’t for puppy dawgs. This here’s where the big dawgs take a piss.’ That’s why they called Dale ‘The Intimidator’.
On my arrival at Lakeland I was told to look for the team’s crew chief, Randy Cox. It came as no surprise. On my previous visit to America I’d met Dick Trickle, the famous racing driver.
Randy bolted me into the Camry without so much as a shock and awe safety briefing. It was stuffed with so many restraints I had to wedge myself into the seat.
‘Y’all set?’
I gave Randy a thumbs up.
‘OK, let’s go.’
I had 800 horsepower at my command in an instant and, with it, a hurricane of sound.
At the end of each short straight I leant heavily on the brakes and worked at straight-lining into and past the apex. The car nose-dived and fired in with superb accuracy and stability. I screwed the speed off, let the big girl turn through the middle and followed the test driver’s advice by opening her out towards the large black tyre marks on the retaining wall as I exited. The power, the beautiful power sang and screamed on the straights as the wheels spun over invisible bumps in the asphalt.
The ever-present concrete wall would punish the slightest deviation from the racing line. It was a superb feeling, like street racing but with more grunt and grip. I drove harder with every lap and my twenty-something passes went all too quickly. It left me wanting more.
‘Where do I sign?’ was my first question as I clambered out of the car. If only it was that easy.
The all-important debrief with Randy took place the same evening at Hooters Bar over a bowl of chicken wings and a beer.
‘When you first drove outta the pits I was takin’ bets from the guys on which lap you’d crash,’ he chuckled. ‘But the times you did in that car, with that set-up, were really impressive.’
I’d narrowly outpaced their benchmark time on lap seven, in spite of driving on older, slower tyres. Not bad for a first drive at a new track, but that’s where the honeymoon ended. Red Bull already had a driver lineup, so I thanked the team and flew back to the UK. They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
* * *
Series 10 of Top Gear was there to console me. Jenson Button had attacked my time in the Suzuki the previous year and failed to beat it. (He subsequently won the Formula 1 title, so I seriously doubt that keeps him up at night.)
Lewis Hamilton was next in the queue. He’d just ended his first season in F1, wiped the floor with his team-mate and former champ Fernando Alonso and narrowly lost out on the title. Now it was time for the Big One: what could the lad from Stevenage do in a Suzuki fartbox?
I’d heard so much hype about Lewis that I was keen to check him out for myself. He arrived in McLaren team gear, but hanging loose. He was disarmingly laid-back and we warmed to him immediately.
I drove him around the slowly drying track to show him the best lines. Apart from Webber, I think he was the only F1 driver to let me do that. I wanted to help him adapt to the majestic Suzuki so I could see what he was truly capable of. I reminded him to get it sideways into the penultimate corner and pin the throttle, not to drive it properly like an F1 machine. The more I explained, the more he listened. This was no prima donna. Sure, he was composed, but not in the least arrogant.
The odd thing about his laps was that they didn’t look special, they were neither lairy nor super-smooth, yet his times in the wet were absolutely stunning. He was doing 1.46, then 1.45 whilst the track was still greasy.
His dad told him not to spin the wheels off the start line, said it was costing him time. Their rivalry was all too familiar. Lewis reacted by sticking an extra thousand rpm on his next launch and smoking the bags. He was having fun, bouncing and jiving to a cool track he found on the radio, ‘Dub Be Good to Me’.
With footage in the can from his earlier runs, we waited for the conditions to improve. When Lewis went again he produced a time of 1:44.7, just 0.3 of a second slower than my best on a fully dry run. I went and checked the track. Many of the corners were practically dry, but not entirely. I played back his in-car footage and felt that he cut some cute lines through the Hammerhead chicane; but nothing unsporting. Even so, his lap was exceptionally fast; he was clearly a special talent. What I admired most was the way he did it so effortlessly and with such humility.
Chapter 30
The Scud
An impeccably turned out Italian driver in his fifties picked me up at Milan Bergamo airport in an equally pristine Mercedes E Class. His immaculately honed features reminded me of Christopher Lee, aka Saruman, the slaughterer of Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. From the moment he tossed my luggage into the boot until we reached our destination he kept away from the middle pedal as he guided his Mercedes missile through the rugged scenery at a cool 100. He never spoke either, apart from when a pair of construction trucks blocked our progress.
‘Che cazzo stai facendo qui?’ he hissed. The hapless drivers yielding their ground immediately. No one screwed with Saruman.
After that brief interruption, I dozed off whilst the best taxi driver in the world dispatched 150km and finally rounded a hairpin to reveal the picturesque resort of Riva, nestled on the shore of Lake Garda. We descended sharply into the spectacular basin hewn into the Dolomite Mountains by ancient glaciers. The sun twinkled on the vast restless pool of water below.
Riva was full of buses downloading their quota of blue-rinsed and pastel-suited holidaymakers. They joined the ranks of cool Italians wearing insect-like sunglasses and an army of Germans chomping on Frankfurters and chips.
The twisting Gardesana road, with its unparalleled views and dramatically claustrophobic tunnels, was a driver’s paradise. Winston Churchill called it the Eighth Wonder of the world. I called it heaven, because it was my first day on set as a member of a James Bond stunt team to film the opening chase scene for The Quantum of Solace.
Production schedules for big movies lasted several months at a time and filming had become more than a part-time role for me. There was a familiar camaraderie with film crews, but I spared more than a few thoughts for my Army mates who were serving overseas with distinction.
I had reluctantly called time on my Army career when it finally became impossible to balance all my commitments, but the bond of brotherhood was unbroken. Military service had changed my outlook on the world forever; anything felt achievable, especially when you were with the right people.
Many of us brought our families out and I was joined by my very own Bond girls. With breakfast under the canopy of a fine restaurant and the water lapping at our feet, Georgie and I found Garda life very appealing. Our baby girl nodded off with the occasional point and shriek of ‘Ca’ – short for car in my book, but Georgie insisted she meant ‘cat’. The unforgettable scenery, sharp company and Italian glamour made ‘work’ seem like a holiday.
Balancing multiple high-octane roles was challenging in every sense. Above all, experiencing such a variety of cutting-edge machinery was the spice of life. Top Gear needed me to return to England to film a ‘Scud’, the Ferrari 430 Scuderia. Ferrari only had it in the UK for one day and Wilman was adamant that I got on a plane.
The Scuderia edition was the super-light, super-sporting, weapons-grade version of the mid-engined Ferrari 430, itself a balanced demi-god. It was the kind of tool that founder Enzo Ferrari first set up his factory to build: uncompromising engineering excellence.
The Scud was epic. It was stripped of all but the basic functions and the weight reduction spent the horsepower all the better around the track. The soft leather wheel
was chunky to grip. A flick of a dial to ‘race’ mode denied any electronic traction interference and upgraded the paddle gear-shift from stun to kill. Each staccato crack beckoned the next gear in just sixty milliseconds.
Schumacher had a hand in the development process that had begun with the original mid-engined Dino in 1970, before passing through the 308 to the 355, and the 430 was the ground-breaking result.
Within a lap I recognised that no supercar had ever held this level of mechanical front grip. It gave such phenomenal feedback through the steering that you felt every movement of the tyre. It was as if the car knew where you wanted it to go before you did.
There was no time to chew the fat with Ferrari before I sprinted back to the airport and returned to Italy. Just enough to say their car was magnificent and had we been on fresh tyres, rather than a set pre-digested by Clarkson, the lap time would have been much faster.
Subsequently, I tested the Ferrari 458 and for a nano-second was beguiled by its voluptuous styling into believing it was better than the Scud. But you can’t improve on perfection, and certainly not by replacing a vital organ like the handbrake with a push-button fuse. That really only left the Scud with one rival for the mantle of Uber-Coupe.
The Aston Martin DBS was one of the most sophisticated machines on the market, perhaps the best all-round sports car ever built. Its graceful curves kept its brute performance covert; beneath the mature exterior was a recalcitrant wild child. It boasted six litres of devilish horsepower, totalling over 500bhp. The V12 engine responded to every millimetre of movement in the throttle, like an F1 car. It howled on full song but reduced to a whispering burble at low revs. The ceramic brakes clamped like vices but with such sensitivity that you could modulate them at the limit of grip from its fat tyres.