The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me. Ben Collins
– chunks of rubber of various sizes that had the same effect as stepping on a banana skin.
After a trouser-ripping 130mph moment on the marbles, I remembered … patience. The opponent’s turn in was heavy-handed and would lead to a mistake if I waited. We nosed over the rise on to the back straight at Coppice, I cut the apex, kept the front wing in clean air and got a run on him.
We drag-raced to the chicane. I pulled alongside, inches apart, and forced his hand. He braked desperately late, compromised his entry line and struggled to accelerate away. I sailed past into the next corner, the very place where we’d built sandcastles a day earlier. That left nine laps to pass two more and catch the leader.
With the race at full pelt, overtaking became harder, as drivers picked their optimum lines and dug in, but I held an advantage under braking. The front group were racing hard for position, trying to force a way past. It was winner takes all.
I lined up on Justin Wilson in third place. I got a run on him at Old Hairpin and gave him enough trouble through McLeans to pass him on the way out.
I chased down second into Redgate and found that my tighter line into the corner was yielding a couple of tenths a lap. The cornering mantra was always ‘slow in, fast out’; taking a wider entry maximised your speed down the straight. But when the car allowed it, you could drive ‘fast in, fast out’. It bagged me second place.
I saw Marc Hynes in the distance. Mr Whippy had managed to steer clear of the carnage I caused in the heat and was chasing down another championship. I was faster, but catching him with only a handful of laps to go was a tall order.
I set fastest lap after fastest lap until I finally got to sit on his gearbox. He was sluggish through Old Hairpin. I aced it. I powered up his right side, around the flat-out kink towards McLeans. With time running out, Marc put me on the grass.
I needed tarmac to round the kink at 120. As I went sideways my life should have flashed before me, but I was treated to a close-up of his Nestlé Ice Creams livery instead. I kept enough throttle trimming the lawn to lose only five car lengths. He had to defend at the chicane. I could taste victory as we rushed to complete the penultimate lap.
As I prepared to knobble Marc with the scissor shuffle, we were red flagged. A big accident behind us meant the race was being stopped. The jammy dodger took another title win ahead of me in second and Justin in third.
GT appeared, positively beaming. ‘If you can drive like that every time you’ll piss it next season. Incredible race; Jackie thought it was fantastic.’
A dream ticket was at the tips of my fingers. With the benefit of their vast experience I would have a clear shot at winning the main title …
But it was not to be. The feedback – via GT – was that I was ‘too old’. PSR wanted to take on Justin. Halfway though the next season I made the jump to Formula 3 National Series instead.
* * *
The Formula 3 car was made of beautiful carbon fibre. Everything from the steering wheel to the gear lever were proper bits of kit. It had sophisticated push rod suspension like a Formula 1 car, with four-way adjustable dampers and a range of critical settings for tuning them.
It reacted to infinitesimal inputs from the driver. Visualising a perfect lap in your mind’s eye was the only way to make the tiny adjustments needed to shave off the thousandths of a second on every corner that constituted the difference between pole and the rest.
Everything ran on a knife edge in Formula 3. It was the birthing pool for F1 talents, from Mansell to Schumacher and the great Ayrton Senna.
I won most of the remaining races from pole position, with fastest laps and a couple of lap records. It was time to move up to the International Formula 3 series and duke it out with the big boys.
In 1997 I took the seat vacated by Juan Pablo Montoya at Fortec. They were running Mitsubishi engines which had monstered the field in ’96. The team manager reckoned that with me and Brian Smith (an Argentinian!) we should win the championship hands down.
Unfortunately the new spec Mitsubishi was a dud. Brian, Darren Turner, Warren Hughes (who ran Mitsubishi) and I only scored a handful of podiums between us.
It was time to prepare for the British Grand Prix support race at Silverstone. As always my old man was on hand, Marlboro in one hand and stopwatch in the other. He marked my split times through the different sectors and told me where I needed to improve.
He was so charming and gregarious, but he set the bar pretty high. I loved him to bits, but there were times when it wasn’t that easy being his only son – or one of his workmates. They dubbed him ‘Bionic Bill’ because his idea of downtime was to stop working between midnight and five in the morning.
Having a poor engine meant that driving balls-out through the corners became de rigueur. I drove back to the pits after the kind of lap I could only repeat twice without crashing and sat down with David Hayle, my engineer, aka ‘Mole’. Sweat dripped off my finger as we moved the cursor along the analysis screen. Formula 3 was all about perfectionism and absolute focus on one thing. Once that attitude became ingrained, it never left.
Mole lowered his specs and gave me a penetrating look. ‘Do you need a few minutes to gather your thoughts, mate?’
I shook my head. ‘Let’s get it sorted before the next session.’
I recognised Dad’s cough a mile away. ‘Mark Webber’s eating you alive coming out of Luffield …’
I was still glued to the monitor. ‘We know.’ I gritted my teeth, ‘We’ve got power understeer in slow corners.’
‘Why haven’t you done something about it then? You look dog slow.’
My heart pounded and I leapt to my feet. ‘Well go and smoke your fags at Maggots then.’ We were standing eye to eye. ‘I’m pissing on Webber through there.’
No one talked to him that way. His blood was boiling; my temples were pulsing. Silence. Dad tweaked his sideburn between finger and thumb. We would never come close to blows, but my money would have been on him if we had.
‘Give it the beans at the weekend, son.’ And with that, he left.
A couple of days later I did some media work with Uri Geller. It turned out that he was a car nut, a hazardous hobby for someone that warped metal just by touching it. I met him at his mansion on the Thames. He had a 1976 Cadillac that was covered in 5,000 bent spoons. He was a lovely guy and made absolutely superb coffee.
Uri didn’t just bend spoons; he somehow managed to draw a shape that I had only pictured in my mind’s eye: a broken arrow with a cross in its tail. He was full of common sense about sport psychology and was fascinated by my sponsor-finding challenges and my search for a competitive ride to propel me to F1. He conjured up an image I’ve recalled many times since, whenever I’ve felt frustrated: ‘Each of us resides inside a bottle that is being carried by the current of a powerful river: fate. The shore is too far away to reach, but we can rock the bottle by running at the sides and though our efforts are small by comparison to the current we can influence our direction: perseverance.’
I believed in reaching the shore.
I rang Mum ahead of the race. After witnessing my first season she never attended in person.
‘Hey, Mum, I met Uri Geller today.’
‘You’ve upset him, you know?’
‘You mean Dad? I know. All he does is criticise …’
‘He’s very proud. He probably didn’t tell you, but he said he watched you all day at some fast corner called Maggie; said that you were the bravest …’
I swallowed hard. I was such an arsehole.
‘We need more than bravery with this bucket. Maybe Uri can bend the pistons. Is Dad coming to the race?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.