The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me. Ben Collins
my visor picked up the blurred lights of the Ferris wheel and intermittent bursts of flash photography. Only die-hard fans stayed out in this.
I sped on, my headlamps carving a 50-metre tunnel through the darkness. I accelerated away from Tertre Rouge in third gear and hammered down the Mulsanne straight, scanning for other cars, searching for puddles. The glistening surface ahead gave nothing away.
I had no idea where Harri had run into trouble. If I made the same mistake I might not be so lucky. I approached the first chicane, scanning sideways along the Armco barriers for something to reference: the marshal’s post, the tree, the gap in the wall, anything that wouldn’t move, for use as a braking point.
I turned right a little for the chicane, then regretted it and straightened again as the car aquaplaned. My stomach tightened as the wheels lost contact with the road; I resisted the temptation to over-correct the steering or brake harder and waited for the car to ‘land’. The engine note returned, telling me the worst was over.
I accelerated cautiously out the other side and back on to the straight, short-shifted into fifth gear and everything went deathly quiet.
The car hit a river of water on the left side of the track at a speed of 150mph. All four wheels lost contact with the tarmac and I travelled 100 metres in freefall. The rear of the Ascari yawed to the right, verging on a fatal high-speed spin, crossed to the right side of the track and ran fast towards the grass. Once there I had another four metres before engaging with the Armco barrier. The odds favoured a hit more than a skim. Broken suspension at the very least.
Drastic action was required.
I stopped correcting the slide and centred the steering in a supreme effort to keep off the grass. As the wheels brushed the white line bordering the circuit the puddles retreated and the car straightened up. The Mulsanne straight had two chicanes to prevent speeds exceeding 250mph. The Rain God had bequeathed it a third but I now knew where it was – and how to drive it.
I motored on, savouring the guilty pleasure of a close shave. No need to tell the team about that one. Sixth gear was redundant because you couldn’t hold the throttle down long enough in a straight line to engage it, unless I could locate the rest of the puddles. I chuntered along in fifth gear and counted the seconds between the big puddles, forming a mental map of the sections of track where it was safe to go faster next time round.
The first lap confirmed that Mulsanne was the worst affected straight and I began adjusting my lines accordingly. I remained cautious, but the car was revelling in the conditions. It was giving so much feedback through the tyres.
The team were quiet on the radio and there was no chance of seeing the pit board. I was alone, but contentedly busy in the mad world of Le Mans at night in a monsoon. I developed a rhythm and took my chances, passing one car after another, straining every rod in my retinas as I searched for a hint of tail-light or a familiar silhouette in the clouds of spray that cloaked every one of them.
The racer ahead might be a prototype as fast as the one I was driving or a GT car travelling at 100mph. The driver might be on the pace and in the zone, or half asleep, or gently urinating himself in response to the conditions.
The first he would know of my existence would be when his cockpit rocked from the blast of my jetwash as I passed his front wheels. Riskier still was tracking down another prototype caught behind one or even two of the slower GTs.
Every sensible bone in my body urged caution. But too much caution and I could be caught in their web for eternity. It was best to take a risk, splash past them and move on. I moved to overtake one guy just as he summoned the courage to hump the car ahead of him, which I couldn’t see. He swung towards me and elbowed me on to the grass at the exit of the curves. I gathered it up and outbraked him at the following chicane as two GTs collided with each other. It was carnage.
I took my chances, like everyone else. The laps flew by, an additional puddle formed on Mulsanne and I figured a cute route through it without lifting. Before I realised it, an hour had passed. The low fuel light on the dash plinked on. I flicked a toggle to engage the reserve tank for the trip back to the pits.
I drove the in lap hard, not forgetting the pit lane might be flooded too. Earlier in the day I’d watched another driver skidding a damaged GT into the gravel pit at the pit entrance. He’d tried to push it out, but was forced to abandon it by the marshals, only metres away from his pit crew who were powerless to help him.
I snaked through the barriers, slowed and engaged the speed limiter. The Ascari’s engine popping and banging like a machinegun, I found our pit amidst the jungle of hoses, boards and crews of other teams.
‘I don’t need tyres. These ones feel great; can we just check them?’ Spencer dived under the wheel arches with his torch and gave a thumbs up seconds later. With a perfectionist like Spencer you never had to second-guess the verdict.
The atmosphere vibrated with tension. Ian looked even more stressed than usual. Perhaps I needed to start pushing harder out there.
‘How are we doing? Is everything OK?’
Before Ian could answer, Klaas leaned over the cockpit. ‘Slow the hell down. You’re the fastest bloody car on the circuit. Take it easy out there, for Chrissake.’
Brian emerged from his warren of computers and calmly announced over the radio: ‘You’re in fourth place. You’ve unlapped the leaders, so you’re now on the lead lap.’
Unlapped the leaders. We were in the big league. No time to contemplate. A hiss and a thud dropped me to the deck; another roar and I was gone. Team Ascari’s Le Mans hopes rested solely on Car 20.
I wanted to get back into the thick of it, check the puddles were still where I remembered and pick up the rhythm.
After about forty minutes a yellow glow started pulsing in the gloom at the edge of the circuit. You never took the warning beacons lightly at Le Mans. I closed up on another racer and rode shotgun until we caught the safety car.
We joined the group bunched behind it, braking hard to avoid a concertina. I just hoped the guys coming up behind me would do the same. Some people swerved around to keep their tyres warm – pretty pointless on wets, worse if you spun on a puddle at 30mph.
I wanted to get past the pack quickly at the re-start and escape their muddle. It beat hanging around to be wiped out by another banzai racer coming from behind.
As we passed the floodlights I recognised former F1 driver Mark Blun-dell in an MG prototype just ahead. He might help clear a path.
I listened carefully for the all clear. ‘Safety car is in, green, green, go, go, go …’
We slithered on to the pit straight, past a near stationary Porsche GT. I had really good drive and stayed welded to Blundell’s tail-lights, hoping to see where the hell he was going in the spray. I pulled out of the jetwash, flew past Blundell and outbraked two more GTs into the first corner.
Back into the groove. The rain kept stair-rodding down. The puddles swelled and then withdrew. Every lap was different. I kept updating my mental map, sliding through mayhem and living the dream. We were closing in on the leading Audis.
The Ascari filled me with confidence in the rain, but the guys on board the Bentley coupé, with its enclosed roof, weren’t feeling the love. Their windscreen was so fogged up that when Guy Smith was driving he couldn’t see through it. The rain forced eleven retirements and a whole lot of walking wounded.
At 4am it eased up a bit. After four hours in the hot seat I was nearing the end of my stint, running the Ascari hard along Mulsanne, when something knocked the wind out of it. The engine misfired; the beast lost speed. I flicked on the reserve tank. No change. The engine was dying.
I was a long way from the pits. The Ascari managed a few more fits and starts, finally cutting all drive at Indianapolis. I pulled up at the Armco, radioed the team and got to work. If I could just remember what Spencer had taught me and Werner during our invaluable engineering induction, I was saved. I reached for the emergency toolkit with Spencer’s words