The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me. Ben Collins
for Speed
I flew along the tarmac, engine screaming. The rain lashed down from the swirling mass of cloud above. With the next corner approaching I checked the mirrors for the competition; they were nowhere in sight. My goal was ultimate speed and perfection, at any cost. Leaning on the brakes at the last possible moment and matching the revs with each down-change, I could feel the chassis squirming loosely as it struggled to find enough grip to cope with the braking forces.
Accelerated movement sharpened the senses, dulled reality, heightened perception, quickened the mind, slowed time, purified travel, transported my being into another world – the place where I wanted to live.
Down into third gear with just enough time to make the crest of the right-hander, the brakes released and we launched through the air, spearing sideways on the landing. It took every ounce of strength to shove the steering into full opposite lock until it banged on to the end of the rack stop. The slide continued, closer and closer to the fence line. I came off everything, released the throttle and hoped for the best. The limited friction of the sodden surface finally took a few crucial mph off my speed, as the slide balanced and the track plunged steeply. I adjusted the steering and cracked the throttle again. I felt unbeatable.
The bottom corner cut across a steep hill, creating a hefty amount of adverse camber. A challenge on a good day, the wet surface seriously reduced the grip and braking power available to make it through.
As I stretched my oversized rubber boot towards the brake, the tip of the toe caught on the bodywork and stuck for a nanosecond too long, causing the rear wheels to lock. Front and rear began to slide in a perfect but totally uncontrollable drift towards the woods.
I started to see strand after strand of barbed wire intertwined between the trees. The consequences of destroying the machine weighed heavily. Fifty miles per hour across wet grass into blades and bark became my immediate reality. Raw adrenalin surged around my system. Time slowed.
I made a split-second decision to save my own skin. I threw myself off and hit the deck hard. Clad in no less than three Barbour jackets and my mother’s Hunter Wellingtons, I scrabbled at clumps of grass to divert my speeding body towards a friendly looking pine.
Meanwhile, the farm’s one and only All Terrain Cycle thundered into a sizeable birch on fast forward, the barbed wire ripping the bodywork apart like a cheese-slicer.
My body cartwheeled across the slick grass and I came to rest in a bed of stinging nettles against the pine tree. I lay flat on my back with tree roots embedded in my shoulders, wheezing to get the wind back into my lungs. I glanced down to see my three pairs of socks dangling from my toes. They had been the only way to fit my ten-year-old feet reasonably snugly into the wellies. The boots themselves, cowards, were nowhere to be seen.
The elation of survival and the absurdity of my situation sank in. I was alone, crashed out at the bottom of a remote field in the corner of a tiny island on a planet the size of a speck of dust in the limitless universe. I burst out laughing.
I wiped the mud from my eyes and hobbled over to make a cursory inspection of the three-wheeled cycle. The bodywork was smashed around the wheel arches, the plastic speedometer was cracked and the foam seat, where I had been sitting just moments earlier, was slashed to pieces by the barbed wire. It looked really cool. Dad was going to kill me. But my addiction to speed was all his fault in the first place.
My father was more into cars than anyone I have ever known. He would watch Formula 1 on the TV religiously, snoring his way through the final laps on a Sunday afternoon. It was my cue to find something more interesting than watching a bunch of cars drone around a stretch of tarmac. And that something normally took the shape of a Lotus F1-styled pedal kart. It took me eighteen years to realise the connection.
The thrill of driving and risk taking had been instilled in me from an early age. No two journeys in my dad’s car were ever the same, but they generally began with some kind of stunt and always broke the speed limit.
When I was four, Dad was a manager for a transport company and his star was rising. His gift was his ability to eye up a business and sharply turn it around. We all climbed aboard his Rover SD1 and headed over to his boss’s place for lunch. It was a cool hatchback, shaped like a wedge of cheese with a hint of Ferrari Daytona around the kisser. Cooler still, I had the matchbox version in its racing livery.
Dad was decked out in a tan suit with ludicrous lapels that were très vogue in the Seventies. His colour blindness always guaranteed something special and today was no disappointment: a psychedelic paisley tie and a bright yellow shirt, dripping with Old Spice.
He came from a working-class background and was raised the hard way. When he earned a slot at the local grammar school, his mother had to dig deep to afford the uniform. Nan didn’t take any crap. When it came to parting with her hard-earned, she bought the uniforms she liked most rather than the one for the institution my dad was actually attending. Sporting the cap from one school and a blazer and tie from two others, his first days at college were inevitably bloody, but he never lost his unique sartorial style.
My mother had swept her hair back in a chignon and boasted pearl earrings, elegant gold necklace and frilly blouse. Fabulous, darling. I sat in the back with my hair like a pudding basin, looking sharp in blue cords and matching jumper. Butter wouldn’t melt.
Seeing us all in our Sunday finery triggered something in my old man. He shot me a knowing smile in the rear-view mirror.
‘Hold on, Ben.’
I knew what that meant.
The lane to the house I grew up in was just over a quarter of a mile long and met the main road at a T-junction. The perfect drag-strip.
Dad dropped the clutch and tore away, laying a couple of thick black lines of bubbling rubber across our driveway. Once the G-forces had subsided, I leant forward to get a ringside view. The revving engine and the squealing tyres all but drowned out my mother’s objections. She swatted him with her handbag, but there was no stopping him.
The hedgerows zoomed past. I cheered every gear change until the T-junction sprang into view. Everything went quiet.
I didn’t need to be a driving expert for my four-year-old brain to register there was no way the car would stop in time for the corner using conventional means. Mum figured that too. She gave up with the handbag and emitted a high pitched ‘Fuuuuuuuuuuck …’
It took a lot to rattle Mum. When she was four years old she lived in Sutton, which lay along the German bombing run during the Second World War. Three of the houses she lived in were completely destroyed. By pure luck, her family had been out on each occasion. One summer’s day she was playing in the garden when her mother screamed for her to come inside. Before she could move an inch, bullets from a low-flying aircraft strafed the garden walls and plant pots exploded either side of her. Mum went on to work in hot spots across the Middle East and around the globe as a Royal Navy nurse. She always held her nerve, but Dad’s driving freaked her out every time.
Dad kept his foot on the gas until the very last moment. The ditch on the far side of the junction was only metres away. We were thrown forward as Dad yanked hard on the handbrake and spun the Rover sideways, skidding across the tarmac.
The car drifted to the edge of the verge bordering the ditch and my stomach flipped with the exciting prospect of crashing into it.
By careful judgement, or a stroke of luck, we just caressed the verge and straightened up. Disaster was averted. Mum recovered her necklace from between her shoulder-blades and we drove away giggling.
I’d never heard my mother swear before, so I treated this new word ‘fuuuuuuuuuck’ with great reverence. After a twenty-five-minute journey we arrived at our destination. Mum adjusted my shirt and tie as we approached the front door. We were greeted by the boss, his wife and finally his daughter.
‘Ben, this is Stephanie.’
‘Fuuuuuuuuuuck Stephanie,’ I replied.
You could have heard a mouse fart. After a little smooth talking, my