The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me. Ben Collins
do you mean – slow down to win?’
‘Rule number one: to finish first, you must first finish, right? With these cars you sit two car lengths behind the ones in front to catch their slipstream and draft past ’em on the straights. If you get one on yer tail, back off into the corner so he can’t get a run on ya.’
I shared my newly acquired wisdom with Georgie over lunch. She was riveted. ‘So does that mean you won’t crash in this one?’
‘I hope so,’ I sighed.
The race that followed was a drafting masterclass. I became embroiled in a four-way scrap for second place whilst the leader ran away. Against every instinct, I backed off through a flat-out bend to put some space between me and the three cars in front. I braked slightly early for the next corner, Sear, then smashed the accelerator.
I hauled up behind the guy in front as he zigged left to overtake the other two running line astern. I stayed put and felt the suction of the two-car draft propelling me down the straight.
Whilst the relative speeds of the other three cars hardly changed, mine doubled. I pelted past all three in one move. I was fully clear as I approached the Esses corner and was so excited I nearly forgot to brake.
The leader was too far ahead to catch but I summoned the fury I found at Cadwell and strained every bit of speed out of my black bullet. I closed in on the final lap but not enough to pass, until he made a mistake at the final bend. I powered out of the chicane and we raced to the line. I won it by one tenth of a second.
Crossing the line first meant the world to me. And I’d learnt some key truths about the sport. Had I forced my overtaking moves early on, I would have crashed. Had I not driven flat out through every corner of every lap, I would have lost the crucial tenth of a second needed to win. It was a delicate balance, knowing when to risk everything and when to hold back. Luck had been a factor, but at least I had started making my own.
Chapter 4
Snakes & Ladders
My second season produced a 100 per cent finishing record. A string of podiums and race wins put me into the lead of the Vauxhall Junior Championship, battling with talented pilots like Marc Hynes and Justin Wilson, two of the most genuine blokes in the sport. Marc was sponsored by Nestlé Ice Creams and looked a bit like one himself: a tall teenage vanilla speckled with hundreds and thousands. Justin was on his meteoric rise to Formula 1, somehow squeezing six foot four of northern sinew into a soapbox racer every weekend to post stupendously fast lap times.
I dropped cheese packing in favour of studying for a law degree, which absorbed nearly all my time when I wasn’t racing. Turning into a very focused, self-centred daredevil meant my relationship with Georgie suffered. She gently bounced me into touch, and I was so hell bent on my career that I refused to acknowledge that my heart was, in fact, irretrievably broken.
My luck on track dried up around that time and I lost the championship to Mr Hynes, finishing alongside Wilson. But it was enough to get me noticed by the crack outfit run by Paul Stewart, Sir Jackie Stewart’s son. Paul Stewart Racing was known for one thing in every category they competed in: winning.
PSR ran a team in the next rung up the racing ladder called Formula Vauxhall Lotus. The cars ran on fat slick tyres with Formula 1 style wings that shoved the rubber into the tarmac and a 2-litre engine that propelled the car through corners at over 145mph. Sexy piece of kit.
The first test was at Donington Park, a grey circuit in the Midlands. Its sequence of fast, flowing turns was made famous by Ayrton Senna’s gutsy overtaking moves on the opening lap of the 1993 Grand Prix. I watched it more times than I can count.
I scanned the colourful articulated trucks lining the old brick pit lane and found the polished blue and white of PSR at their head. The team were always decked out in matching blue clothing and had a systematic approach to everything they did. The mechanics were like young doctors, and their work area looked like a spotless surgery. I prayed no dirt fell from my shoes as they clacked across the pristine plastic flooring.
Graham, or ‘GT’, the team manager, was a young guy with an endearing smile that belied his ruthless inner ambition. Underneath the rosy-cheeked veneer was a head shrinker who probed the depths of a driver’s every performance via the onboard data logging system and by asking difficult questions.
‘Did you notice we put another hole of front wing on, and you ran a heavier fuel load? How many laps do you think these tyres have done? Do you think a stiffer rear rollbar would help you through the fast corners if we drop the ride height and adjust the camber for the low speed? Why did you change your line into Turn One after lunch?’
Graham used onboard computers that logged the car’s information and driver inputs. They were recorded so accurately that you could analyse every movement of the steering, brakes and throttle to develop the perfect style, which further deepened the mental dimension.
The Lotus accelerated from 0 to 60mph in three seconds and took me by surprise at first. The scenery went flying by and the engine was bumping off the rev limiter, demanding the next gear. Something clicked in my brain that day, because I never sensed speed the same way after that. Once I got used to it, nothing ever felt fast again.
The blind crests of Donington’s Craner Curves were not for the faint-hearted as the sharp descent doubled your acceleration through a long left. In a machine like the Lotus with more relative grunt than grip, you hung your balls over the wing mirrors to take Craners flat, then wrestled the chassis across to the left in time to put your affairs in order for the equally hairy off-camber right known as ‘Old Hairpin’. With tyres stretched to the limit, a tiny error of timing was punished by a rapid departure from the black stuff.
I prepared for a new tyre run to see what time I could set. GT squatted next to me and rested his arm on the sidepod. If I could just impress him enough, Jackie Stewart’s staircase of talent could lead me all the way to F1. After a silence, GT gave me a warm smile. At last I was winning him over. Then he casually said, ‘We’ve just been watching Wilson at the Old Hairpin. He’s flying, head and shoulders braver than anyone else there.’
The words cut me to the bone. I’d have preferred him to have called me a raging poof.
The winter air was crisp, ripe for the engine to produce its best power. After a mega run out of the first corner I took Craners flat out with a squeak of understeer from the new tyres, without compromising my line for the Old Hairpin.
The engine bounced off the limiter in top gear, I dabbed the brake and guided my missile right, carrying an extra 5 mph. It went in so fast the front wheel floated over a blurred apex kerb. I held on, ran wide and mullered the big exit kerbing. Dust spewed up and I knew the lap was already miles faster than anything the others had managed. I wanted to monster their times.
I left my braking super late into the next corner, a fast cresting right, at just over 140. The brake pedal hit the floor. I pumped again. Nothing. I was travelling 60mph too fast to make it. I was leaving the circuit. By the third touch of the brakes I was skipping across the grass, spinning sideways through the gravel trap, then airborne for the remainder of my journey. I stonked into the barriers with the rear left wheel first. It ripped off the suspension, shattered the gearbox casing and whipped the nose into the wall, shattering the front wing. What a ride!
My body took the impact well. I withdrew my hands from the wheel before it spun violently through 180 degrees, which would have broken my wrists had I clung on.
I explained what happened to Graham, who never looked up from his computer when I walked back in. ‘Did you kerb it at the Old Hairpin?’ he asked matter-of-factly as he frowned at my speed graphs.
‘Big time.’
‘Sounds like pad knock-off then.’
‘What’s that?’
The mechanics tutted behind me as they unbolted tangled remains of bodywork from the chassis and half the gravel trap unloaded on to their operating theatre.
‘Sometimes when