THE MAN

IN THE WHITE SUIT

THE STIG, LE MANS, THE FAST LANE AND ME

BEN COLLINS

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

Copyright © Ben Collins 2010

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Source ISBN: 9780007327966

Ebook Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007331703

Version: 2020-02-05

Dedication

Dad, thank you for every opportunity that life brought through your guidance.

Mum, your moral compass is a shining light; thank you for putting up with me.

Epigraph

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

T. E. LAWRENCE

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1 - Audition

Chapter 2 - Need for Speed

Chapter 3 - Winning

Chapter 4 - Snakes & Ladders

Chapter 5 - Le Mans 24

Chapter 6 - Daytona Endurance

Chapter 7 - The New Stig

Chapter 8 - Green Fatigue

Chapter 9 - Live at Earl’s Court

Chapter 10 - Rockingham

Chapter 11 - Hard Routine

Chapter 12 - Tortoise or the Hare

Chapter 13 - Chin Strap

Chapter 14 - Cowell’s got Talent

Chapter 15 - A Walk in the Park

Chapter 16 - Pass or Fail

Chapter 17 - Happy Landings

Chapter 18 - Stars in Reasonably Priced Cars

Chapter 19 - Driving Blind

Chapter 20 - Taking the Rough with the Smooth

Chapter 21 - If It’s Got Wheels

Chapter 22 - Bitten by the Bug

Chapter 23 - Track Record

Chapter 24 - Match of the Day

Chapter 25 - Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter 26 - Jet Man

Chapter 27 - Street Fighting

Chapter 28 - London Calling

Chapter 29 - Pedal on the Right

Chapter 30 - The Scud

Chapter 31 - Untamed: Hampshire Heist

Chapter 32 - Bus Racing

Chapter 33 - Loose Cannon

Chapter 34 - The White Bubble

Chapter 35 - Who is the Stig?

Chapter 36 - Give My Regards to Dunsfold

Epilogue

Photographic Insert 1

Photographic Insert 2

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Audition

Intermittent shafts of sunlight sliced across the damp carriageway through the canopy of trees. Leaves spattered away from the spinning wheels. I still had plenty of time, but this journey was worth enjoying, so I kept pulling gears and cranked the stereo.

The suspension shuddered as I braked hard on the worn tarmac and rounded a long hairpin. The car was busy but my mind, as usual, was elsewhere. Was this a good idea? Who was this guy I was meeting? Where the hell was this place?

I glanced down at my complex route directions, then realised my turning was about to appear on a blind bend. I slowed to check for oncoming traffic before veering off down a track with no discernible markings.

My left thumb clicked at the handbrake button as I toyed with the idea of a sharp about-face. I topped a gentle crest and the view widened. Just past a field of grazing sheep lay a security entrance. Three feet and two inches to the right of the middle of nowhere.

The security guard spilt his tea and leapt to his feet as I pulled up at the gate. He emerged from his cabin and approached my window. ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘Who are you here with?’

That was a trickier one, but I dealt with it.

‘ Oh, OK, just follow the one-way system around.’

I drove into a vast expanse of clear skies, grass, concrete and airfield. The path ahead led to an old DC3 passenger plane. I followed the broken concrete track to the right. An office building stood amongst a haphazard collection of large green metal warehouses. I dropped down a ramp into a staging area in front of a much larger hangar. At the far end of it, on the edge of the airfield, lay a very dilapidated cabin with ‘Production’ daubed on its side. A Harrier Jump Jet was parked in the middle distance.

It seemed I’d arrived at the ‘Studio’. With a little time in hand, I walked the site.

The airfield was as flat as a billiard table, with neat green fields surrounding the tarmac landing strips. I couldn’t make out any kind of circuit in the sea of grey mist. A tired silver tree-line separated the earth from the clear blue sky.

The place must have had a real buzz in its glory days, first during the Second World War and then as a Harrier proving ground. On this still morning I could almost hear the banter of aircrew scrambling to their aircraft.

Now it felt like the Land that Time Forgot. Rusted control panels littered the area. Cracked concrete billets jostled with disused hangars and pebble-dashed Seventies monstrosities.

I paid an obligatory pre-match visit to the nearby loos. Two fresh pieces of graffiti read: ‘Fuck Jeremy Clarkson’ and ‘Richard Hammond is a’. Sadly, Hammond’s eulogy had never been completed. My laughter echoed down the deserted corridor. I felt like a madman.

I returned to the production hut and gave it the once over. A cardboard cut-out of a policeman stood guard at the window beside a larger cut-out still of John Prescott, an ironing board, a moth-eaten mini-sofa and a cluster of toxic coffee cups and Bic biros.

What the hell did they do here?

A worn chair overlooked a grubby telephone which sat, inert, on a filthy wood veneer table. A printed list of ‘key contacts’ was pinned to the wall, belying the cabin’s absence of discernible function.

Room 2 was marginally better appointed, with a small TV set surrounded by VHS tapes but no player. A few photos of random celebrities decorated the flimsy, cobwebbed walls.

Room 3 contained a large hanging rail from which hung a gold sequin jacket, a flower power shirt and an enormous pair of jeans. A crate of Red Bull lurked in the corner. The place stank of fags, mildew and Eau de Man.

With an uncertain recollection of my last tetanus jab, I opted to wait inside my car and nod off to some filthy hard house tunes.

I woke to the sound of rushing gravel as a small hatchback pulled up in front of me. I guessed this was my man by his silver hair and media issue denim jacket. I climbed out to greet him.

He hitched up his trousers and shuffled towards me like a glum but familiar uncle on a rare visit home. It was only 9.30, but his five o’clock shadow suggested he had already had a long day. He clasped a bursting folder of papers under one arm.

He looked in every direction but mine. I moved to shake his hand. With some reluctance he eventually reciprocated.

‘Right …’

‘Great to meet you, Andy.’

‘Did you tell anyone you were coming?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘OK, good.’

Andy explained that the track would open up for some fast laps at ten. I had no idea of what the track even looked like, what car I would be driving or what test lay ahead, so it wasn’t easy to prepare for what came next.

Andy unlocked a blue Ford Focus in the car park and it dawned on me that this underpowered front-wheel-drive affair would be his measuring stick of my performance. Years of racing experience in Formula 1 style machines went out the window; it was time to rely on a few bad habits.

Andy hunched over the wheel and drove us serenely around the track. But for the occasional steely-eyed glare at a corner, his eyes sparkled as if he was enjoying some private joke.

The silver fox indicated the areas I was ‘not allowed to drive across’, such as the white lines on the exit of the first corner, coming out of the second corner, and especially those marking the ‘Hammerhead’ chicane. I nodded respectfully, as you do on the headmaster’s tour of the school grounds.

The track looked straightforward enough, and there were some ballsy fast corners in the middle that could be hairy in a proper car.

‘This one sorts the men out from the boys,’ Andy said with something approaching relish.

A riot of skid marks and freshly carved-up grass around the final corners did indeed suggest that the last two turns might be treacherous.

Andy’s expression darkened again as he parked on the start line and he compressed his lips. ‘You start each lap here, yeah, and I’ll be timing you. Go across the line and then I’ll reset so you can go again.’

‘So it’s not flying laps then?’

‘No. Standing start every time.’

‘How many do I get?’ I asked.

‘Um … we’ll do a few. OK.’

Andy disembarked. I jumped into the driver’s seat and clunk-clicked. The foam seat didn’t give much, it felt upright and too close to the wheel. I shuffled it back for some leg-room, adjusted the steering higher and removed the valet paper from the foot-well. I gave the controls a quick once-over. A five-speed manual box and a fairly solid brake pedal.

I searched the dashboard for the traction control button and turned it off for the closest its 1.6 litres could get to maximum, unbridled acceleration. I envisaged making a few reconnaissance laps to learn the track, then posting a ballistic time.

As I looked up Andy was gesticulating with his right hand and brandishing a stopwatch with his left.

‘Shit, hang on …’

I grabbed the gear-stick and jammed it into first gear, simultaneously gunning the engine to a respectable 4,000rpm. Andy’s arm dropped and I didn’t stick around to ask questions. Dumping the clutch, I lurched off the line, wheels spinning and clawing at the track.

Less revs next time …

The car felt tiny on the broad expanse of runway. I approached the first corner by positioning myself to the far right, then swung across to the left, leaving my braking till the last possible moment.

I heaved on the middle pedal and the ABS cut in immediately, reducing it to a vibrating waffle. The front tyres of the Focus were in protest all the way. I missed the middle point of the corner by a country mile, which cost me speed on to the short straight that followed. I planted the accelerator anyway.

The tyres howled with discomfort and wafts of burning rubber filled the cabin, replacing the sweet silicone smell of the new fabrics.

I pulled out of the gutter and lined up for a simple left-hand kink marked only by a white line as the surge of torque ran through the Ford’s engine. There was no need to release the throttle as we sped towards the next corner, marked by a wall of tyres, that Andy had called ‘Chicago’.

I hit the brakes with a little more sensitivity and the front tyres responded by turning more gracefully in the right direction. I slapped the stick across to second and gradually soaked up the biting point of the clutch to let the torque of the engine-braking do its job. I snatched a tiny bit of the throttle mid-corner to keep up the speed before burying it again.

I proceeded down the middle of a gigantic runway and realised I had no idea where to go next. After a while, the straight began to run out. I noticed some unfriendly looking fencing in the scrub beyond for netting runaway aircraft. I didn’t fancy tangling with it, but I didn’t want to lose time being cautious either.

To my right was a braking marker, with some squiggly white lines adjacent. The notorious Hammerhead chicane.

I whipped across to the right-hand side and dived on the brakes. The ABS thought it was having an accident, then so did I as the rear end lost grip.

I flicked the steering left and right as the back swung around like a Beyoncé bootie shake. I accelerated to regain control and the powering front wheels dragged the squirming chassis into line, a trait unique to front-wheel-drive cars.

Messy, I’ll get it right next time …

I sped down the straight towards the fast ‘Follow Through’ section. Without knowing how many laps I had to prove myself, I opted to try the corner flat out and see what gave.

I turned in towards the red-painted chevrons on the tarmac and felt the Ford’s body lean heavily on to its wheel arches as the weight swung across the suspension. The wing mirrors were scraping the floor as I ran out wide towards the grass. Her ass wiggled as she dipped in and out of a small gully and I breathed again as we rejoined the tarmac.

I approached the Chicago tyre wall for the second time, remembering to hold it flat for the left, rather than braking to turn right. The level horizon made it hard to read the ground coming fast through the dashboard but I could see a seam where the taxiway joined the main runway. I aimed for the angular join, clobbered a storm drain and flew out the other side. A flurry of spray squirted out of the brimmed windscreen washer reservoir as the impact weakened its bladder. The citrus taste in my mouth made me swallow for the first time since I started the lap.

The big challenge lay in the final two corners, which I couldn’t even see because the runway was so wide and stretched so far into the distance.

I would be approaching ‘Bacharach’ at the car’s terminal velocity. After my Hammerhead experience, I opted for a sensible approach and scoured the runway for signs of a corner. Suddenly, 100 feet to my left, an opening in the grass appeared.

The brakes groaned. The car pointed clumsily in the correct direction and travelled the breadth of the runway to finally join the corner, which abruptly tightened. The road quickly ran out and I dropped two wheels on the turf. Now I knew why this was skid mark central.

There was a short shoot to the final corner and I wondered if I could take it without braking. I dabbed the pedal anyway and was glad for it as the front broke away and the grass verge to the outside loomed into view, with Andy standing on it.

His trousers were bunching at the ankle again as he bent and fixed me with his stony gaze. He snapped down hard on his stopwatch as I crossed the line.

I pulled up alongside him and rolled down the window.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think I know which way the track goes now. What am I trying to beat?’

‘We don’t tell you the times.’

‘What? Not even my times?’

‘Nope. The old Stig’s pretty fast round here though. He knew this place like the back of his glove. Can you go any quicker?’

‘Absolutely. That’s just my first go.’

A puff of smoke appeared from behind the wing mirror. A sniff in its direction confirmed the problem.

‘Excuse me, I think the brakes are catching fire. I’ll be back in a minute.’

I set off down the airstrip to cool the pins and assess the situation. This was unlike any qualifying session I’d done before. The rules seemed to be changing by the minute.

Without a time to beat I had to focus on maximising my personal performance. If I could put a lap together that I would struggle to repeat, I’d bet it would beat whatever benchmark time Andy had for this car. The track was simple enough, if a little hard to make out, but my peripheral vision was dialled in. Now I just needed to master the rhythm. Just one, perfect, lap.

I lined up at the start and warned Andy to stand further back this time.

My second lap was much cleaner. I punished the front tyres less by braking lighter and earlier to carry more speed into every corner. I slammed across the finish line, ran a little wide and caught a glimpse of Andy pouncing on his stopwatch.

I rolled the window down and he leant against the door.

‘How was that?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I grinned. ‘You tell me!’

‘You’re not far off.’

That was when the adrenalin started. The early laps were just kitten play. To eke out the tiny fractions of speed in every corner, I needed one exceptional run. My mouth dried as blood surged around my body and I felt the elation of impending excellence. I was becoming quicker, stronger and more explosive with every heartbeat. I was a heartbeat away from bursting out of my shirt and turning green.

I made a perfect start. The short hairs prickled on the back of my neck. At the far end of the tunnel lay the first corner. I absorbed the view. As I closed in, I allowed my vision to loosen, blur and widen into the periphery. One all-seeing eye.

I braked late, skimming the gravel on the inside and loading the front tyres just enough to prevent the ABS from gate-crashing. I squeezed the throttle. The car remained steady, boring even. Perfect.

The process was repeated through Chicago and then Hammerhead, staying just within the tolerance of the front tyres, controlling every movement, stealing every ounce of throttle, every inch of tarmac.

I used as little steering as possible through the fast right, then the left, keeping the friction of the rubber to the bare minimum with the gas pedal welded to the floor. The tyres emitted a guttural howl as all four wheels skated at 100mph. Only two turns to go.

The speed ramped up as I shifted into top gear. The markers appeared on my right side, with the 100 first. I scanned left and found the corner. Not yet. Past the 50. Not yet. The final marker, an arrow board, was coming up fast.

I braked, the car dug in, then I immediately had to release the pressure to get the front wheels to turn. It was an impossible speed and the rear skidded away. I jammed the throttle open. The front wheels spun in third gear and I flipped a coin in my head: stick or spin. Stick, you bastard.

The car launched into the corner at an acute angle, cutting across the grass at its apex and bouncing over the concrete kerbing. I was out of control, but coping.

I slid across the narrow section of tarmac and dropped three wheels on the grass on the exit. I barely had time to get back on the black stuff to blat the brake and chuck it left for the last time.

I pitched her in a bit too quick, swiped the apex, slid wide and hit the mark where Andy had been standing. The verge projected the car sideways into the air but it no longer mattered to me. It could flip on to its roof and explode because we’d still cross the finish line just 25 feet away.

I crashed landed on the other side of the grass, the metal wheel rims ploughing first into the concrete then crunching through the gravel bed lining the edge. Rocks spewed in all directions.

‘That one felt good,’ I said.

Andy was scribbling notes in his little pad.

‘Yeah. That one was faster.’

I thought to myself, Yes, I’ve bloody got this! but made no outward sign, since he hadn’t either.

His brow furrowed. ‘Do you think you can get any more out of it?’

‘More?’ That had me worried. I didn’t think it had any, but it was worth a try.

I banged in another lap that was nearly as fast as my best, then conceded that I couldn’t go any quicker.

‘All right. Well, if you think that’s it, we’ll call it a day.’

Andy put his stopwatch back into his pocket. It seemed that our business had been concluded. He thanked me and said he would call me sometime.

I waited weeks for any suggestion that my performance was up to scratch, or that there was any work with these people that might pay the rent. Andy called and asked me to send him a commercial I’d done for Vauxhall which featured lots of precision sliding close to camera on snow and ice, just the kind of tradecraft he needed. ‘Can you send the rushes too?’

‘Sure, no problem,’ I told him, not knowing what on earth he was talking about.

Rushes, I learnt, were the raw footage. By sifting through them, Andy could determine whether the director had had to edit around my driving or if I was consistently getting it right on the first take. His attention to detail knew no bounds. Only time would tell if I had a future with Top Gear.

Chapter 2

Need 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 parents dug themselves out of it and I was allowed in for chipolatas and cake.

Dad kept his job with the company in spite of his feral offspring and we were invited back for a grander function a year later. The company was changing its vehicle fleet and new cars were dished out. I knew how disappointed he was not to be in line for a new Jaguar XJS, like the one the boss had ordered for himself.

We piled into the Rover to the accompaniment of Dad’s favourite driving soundtrack, the jangling guitar riffs from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I was thoroughly briefed to avoid the swearing issue, but Dad was kicking off again about the Jaguar situation. Mum told him to put a sock in it.

I didn’t talk much as a kid and they probably thought I wasn’t listening. I felt detached from the absurdity of the everyday. I stared blankly at the blurred stream of green and yellow outside the window and dreamt of flying this low in a fighter jet. Secretly, I was in training.

We duly arrived at the party and made it past the introductions without a single thirteen-letter word. The do was well under way, with scores of business types mingling, networking and slurping their way up the corporate food chain. My old man was holding forth as ever, entertaining a group of young managers with a mixture of jokes and forthright discussions, interspersed by plenty of vigorous gestures and raucous laughter. Dad’s laugh was infectious. His eyes creased and his broad mouth spread into the enchanting grin that epitomised his joie de vivre.

I was loitering around the food table like a time bomb waiting to explode. I was already programmed with the view that the world was populated by good guys and bad guys, and in this room full of small talk and grown-ups I decided to break free of my shyness and act on a judgement call.

The boss was breezing past when I caught his eye. He felt he had to stop and feign some interest.

‘How is school then … uh … Ben?’ he asked.

‘Why can’t my daddy have a Jaguar?’ I replied.

He made some more talking noises that failed to make an impression on me, so I kicked him squarely in the testicles.

A small boy was ideally placed for such an attack. What I lacked in firepower was more than made up for by the accuracy gained from being at eye level with the target.

Judging by the way the boss’s legs buckled as he doubled over, I’d properly rung the bell on his High Striker. The second pain-wave swept across him, tears welled in his eyes and he dropped to his knees, straining to get his breath back. Something about the bell-bottoms draped from his parted legs on the Oriental rug made him look entirely ridiculous. The whole party erupted with laughter. The boss was as popular in the office as David Brent.

The importance of being truthful and standing up for myself had been instilled in me by my parents; I just added my own interpretation. Dad deserved that car and the boss was a troll under the bridge for suggesting otherwise. ‘Truth Tourette’s’ has stuck with me ever since. I can’t say that it’s made life easy, but I’ve enjoyed busting a few balls.

Dad didn’t get the Jaguar that time but he made up for it in later life. He changed cars as often as he emptied the ashtray. He must have owned about forty of the things. As soon as he could afford one, he bought it.

In spite of the love of cars that pervaded our family, my sole ambition was to be a fighter pilot. I wanted supersonic speed and the superhuman reflexes to go with it. I read endless accounts of Jump Jets winning in combat simulations against scores of faster but less nimble American F-14 Tomcats. My bedroom was littered with posters of fighter planes and books detailing every conceivable weapons system and their theatre of operation. I memorised payloads, thrust-to-weight ratios and the minutiae of flight. One hundred per cent nerd alert.

Repeated high scores on the Star Wars Arcade game proved to me that my acceptance into the RAF was a mere formality. ‘Waive the vetting process, fellas, send this one straight up to splash Migs.’

Mum recommended I go for an eye test just to be sure.

I perched on a leather stool and after considerable winding it was high enough for me to view the testing screen. I stared at a sequence of glowing shapes inside a hooded computer, listening to the optician’s breathing as he tapped his keyboard. His swivel chair clattered across the floor and he whispered a string of impatient instructions.

The test was over after a few minutes. My stomach tightened with a flush of excitement. I had taken the first step on a greater path.

‘How did I do?’

The optician glanced briefly in my direction. ‘They wouldn’t even let you load the bombs, son, let alone fly one.’

If he had only known how close his crown jewels were to extinction, he might have shown some respect. In Han Solo’s vernacular, I had jumped out of warp speed straight into an asteroid belt. My hopes and dreams evaporated. I was grounded.

I hated being told what I couldn’t do, but it was a powerful tonic. The harder they push you down, the harder you come back up, overcome and overwhelm. Mind you, there was no overcoming my eyesight.

Mum tried to console me by suggesting other possible careers – the forestry commission perhaps? I sat in my room for hours surrounded by pictures of machines that I would never fly.

My competitive instinct discovered another outlet for my emotions. My introduction to swimming was not exactly of my own volition, but it was the best thing that could have happened.

The Collins family moved to California when I was five; my father had been hired to turn around a haulage firm. My parents took me to the local swimming club. The coach was a tanned surfer dude with sun-bleached locks and a ripped torso. I shivered at the side of the pool, looked at the other kids pounding lengths, and decided against it.

Dad had a temper that was even quicker than his wit and I went to great lengths to avoid it.

‘Ben, get in.’ He didn’t look pleased.

‘No,’ I replied anxiously.

He went for the grab and I dived for cover. I managed to hook my arm through a sun-lounger, which came with me as Dad lassoed my kicking legs and pulled them towards him. I knew I was safe as long as I could hold on to that lounger. Dad upped the ante. He picked up the lounger with me attached and threw the job lot into the pool. I was in at the deep end and it was a case of sink or swim or come up with an alternative cliché.

I was furious and puny and grew angrier still as Dad looked down at me, failing to restrain his laughter. I set off at a rate of knots to the other end of the pool. Reluctantly, I discovered I was quite a fast swimmer.

After my turbulent initiation, I enjoyed training with the club and began competing. The whole family turned out for my first appearance at a regional gala and my grandma wished me good luck. ‘Go and win all your races,’ she told me. To my astonishment, I did. Winning felt good; it gave me a sense of purpose.

The Ojai Valley swim team punched well above its regional weight and I was soon competing at Junior Olympic standard. Our coach wrote training exercises on a blackboard during our daily sessions and I learnt never to read too far down. If the top read ‘600m’, that was all that mattered, even if the next line read ‘1,000m through crocodile infested swamp’. Focusing on anything but the present only made life harder.

The techniques were challenging, sliding your arms in a controlled arc around your body to propel yourself through the water. Mastery over breathing was essential and it developed the cardio-vascular system. The controlled intake and release of air was calming and a vital element for keeping the body platform stable and fast.

I was good but I tended to get carried away trying to go too fast, spinning my arms through the water like a windmill.

The explosive nature of the races was all-consuming.

The word ‘can’t’ was banned by our coach, but regardless how hard I trained with him or how much I attacked the water, I felt unable to produce true excellence. Without that goal, swimming became a hobby rather than my sport. But it remained an invaluable introduction to the art of mental and physical conditioning that would prove essential in racing, and beyond.

Chapter 3

Winning

I wanted to be inspired by something I could excel at, consumed with a passion to succeed. I caught the first glimpse of the path I wanted to choose on my eighteenth birthday.

My father’s exceptional gift was a trial in a single-seat racing car at the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. I had only been driving for a few months – around the country lanes in my mother’s L-plated 4x4, with her riding shotgun. Mum hit me so often with her handbag that she broke the handle. Apparently I ‘left no margin for error’.

Dad had been raving about his experiences of racing; he’d just started competing himself. After a tooth-jarring trip across the snaking stretches of the Cotswolds with him working the wheel, we arrived at the circuit gates.

The moment we pulled off the road, the tarmac inside became more generous. Grandstands grew skywards in preparation for a big event and the unusual barrier walls were painted in blue and white blocks. I caught glimpses of the track from behind the grass banks. The bare breadth of bitumen with no road markings was unlike anything I had ever seen.

I climbed into one of my old man’s racing suits and tied on what looked like blue ballet shoes. A man gave a briefing to a group of us that involved plenty of crashing and potential death. We were using the high-speed Grand Prix circuit and had to show it due consideration.

The racing car was nothing much to look at. It lacked Formula 1 wings and hardly made a sound as the mechanics fired it up, but every component had an essential purpose. Business-like wheels carrying ‘slick’ tyres with no tread on them were attached to bony steel suspension arms bolted to a slender steel frame tub, at the front of which sat the nose, honed like the tip of a rocket. The bodywork was trim and crafted purely for speed.

Standing off to one side, I raised my right leg over a sidepod containing the cooling system, and into the cockpit. I rested one arm on the highest point of the car, just 30 inches from the ground, then pulled in the other leg. Standing on the moulded seat, I gripped the sides and slid my feet forwards.

The rev counter, speedo, oil and water temperature gauges were hidden behind the small black steering wheel, along with numerous mysterious buttons. The stainless steel gear stick to the right was the size of a generous thumb. It shifted with a delicate ‘thunk’ from one gear to the next.

My feet touched the pedals jammed closely together ahead of me. The brake was solid as a brick, the throttle stiff until you applied pressure, when it responded precisely to tiny movements. The steering felt heavy with no power assistance, only the strength I applied to it transferring energy to the front wheels which I could see turning ahead of me.

I tightened the belts and they jammed me into the seat, connecting me to the car. The hard seat grated at the bones in my shoulders. Everything was so alien, yet I knew it then. I was home.

The instructor deftly turned a red lever a quarter turn clockwise, flicked a pair of switches and an orange light glowed; the car was alive. ‘Put your right foot down a quarter of an inch.’

I responded.

He pressed a black button and a high-pitched squeal was followed by the rhythmic churn of the engine. It sparked into life and beat an eager pace, rumbling faster than any car I had ever heard. The sound alone was enough to splash adrenalin through my veins. I was at the edge of the unknown. The responsive throttle, the direct steering, the beating engine, the slick gearbox … All were built with a single purpose: speed.

My first laps were shonky; I missed gears and adjusted to the precision of the controls. Once I built up some speed the steering became intense and darty. When I ran over a bump the floor actually hit my backside, I was sitting that close to the ground. The sense of speed in a straight was pale by comparison to the corners.

The belts dug into my shoulders as I sped through the turns like a cruise missile, albeit a largely unguided one. I pushed the envelope a little further with every lap.

I overcooked it several times and spun at Copse, the fastest corner. The wall was close to the track and I sensed danger until the car miraculously pointed itself in the right direction. I pushed on.

The session ended in a flash, a million years too early. I reluctantly pulled into the pits and spotted Dad in the distance next to one of the Ray Ban-toting instructors. In spite of numerous No Smoking signs, he had a Marlboro 100 glued to his bottom lip and was clapping his four-fingered hand. He’d lost the little digit rescuing a horse.

My times equalled the track record for the car. Ray Ban man was telling my dad he should really get me into a race. The old man was clearly sold on this plan all along. We had to convince my mother, but I figured another trip around the country lanes should do the trick.

From that moment on, my sole ambition, my obsession was to race. The life I lost as a pilot was reincarnated as a racing driver. Every day from then until this morning my eyes opened to the same living dream. I wanted to be a Formula 1 champion. Nothing else mattered.

The traditional route to Formula 1, or to any top category in motor sport, was to compete in go-karts from the third trimester. I’d grown up competing in pretty much every other way, as a swimmer, on skis and getting out of scrapes at school. I had the killer instinct to win, but no experience of motor racing, and it was a major disadvantage. Not that I saw it that way.

I duly obtained a racing licence at Silverstone and found myself looking down at aggressive short people. Karting, with its performance so closely linked to weight, had weeded out the big ones.

I joined the bottom rung of the racing ladder: Formula First. It was derided as a championship for nutters and the scene of too many crashes. It was the cheapest form of single-seater racing and the best way to go about winning my way to Formula 1. Piece of cake.

The other drivers wore colourful helmet designs and important looking racing overalls plastered with sponsors. Dad suggested I start out with something simple based on the Union Jack. In the end I opted for an all-black race suit, black gloves, black boots and a black Simpson Bandit helmet with a black-tinted visor …

From the first day I began testing the car, every waking thought revolved around a single subject: driving fast. With no prior racing experience, I learnt the trade by word of mouth, from books about great drivers like Ayrton Senna and Gilles Villeneuve, magazine articles and television. Mostly, I learned the hard way by just doing it. And shit happened.

One bit of training saved my life many times over. I attended a skid control course, which had nothing to do with brown underpants. The instructor, Brian Svenson, was a former wrestler known as ‘The Nature Boy’. He had no neck but gave plenty of it as he talked me through his Ford Mondeo, fitted with a rig that could lift the front or rear wheels off the ground to make them slide.

Every time I turned the steering, the rear would spin sideways as if it was on ice. My hands flayed at the wheel like a chimpanzee working the till at McDonald’s. Fingernails went flying, the horn was beeping, and before I knew what had happened we were sailing backwards.

Brian pressed a button on the control panel in his lap and calmly pulled the handbrake. The car came to a rest in a cloud of burnt rubber and I relaxed.

‘Oversteer, right!’ he barked.

‘OK. What does that mean?’

‘Well in that case it means the fooking car spun around, yeah. You lost the back end, so it feels like the car is turning too much. Over. Steer.’ His words sank in.

‘When it ’appens, feed the steerin’ into the slide as fast as you can. None o’ that DSA shuffling bollocks. You’ve quick reactions, just spin that wheel across a bit further.’

‘OK, Brian.’

Off we went again. My psychotic instructor pressed more buttons as we approached a tunnel of orange cones with an inflatable obstacle at the far end. I turned the steering left to dodge the obstacle and nothing happened, so I turned more.

‘Stop turning,’ ordered Nature Boy.

‘Sod that.’ I turned more. Nothing.

Whumpf.

‘Shit.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘What happened then, Brian?’

‘Understeer, right. When you turn nothin’ happens. The car goes straight on, yeah?’

‘What should I do?’

‘Not much you can do, but turning more only makes it worse. Just get the speed off then the grip comes back.’

We upped the speed to 60. After several gut-wrenching 360-degree spins, Nature Boy taught me to flick my head around like a ballerina to see where I was going and control it. It was incredible. We would enter a corner at pace and the car would start rotating. Wherever I looked, my hands would follow and the car pointed back in the right direction.

I started to complete lap after lap of the circuit, drifting from one gate through to the next. I forgot I was even carrying a passenger until the sound of Nature Boy clapping brought me back to my senses. I realised that Brian could no longer unseat me.

‘Excellent. You’ve got it. When’s your first race?’

‘Next week, at Brands Hatch.’

‘What you driving?’

‘Formula First, at the Festival.’

‘Oh Christ,’ he said, biting his top lip. ‘Good luck. Just try and remember what I’ve taught ya. If you can tell your mechanic what the car’s really doing, you’ll go far.’

Formula First was a series for ‘beginners’. The grid for my first event boasted a karting world champion, two national champions and race winners from the previous season. Most had been racing karts since they swapped nappies for Nomex. After several days of learning to drive the car at labyrinthine circuits like Oulton Park, I arrived at Brands for my first motor race.

Brands Hatch being a former Grand Prix circuit, even I had heard of this place. Formula First was supporting the Formula Ford Festival that was host to over a hundred of the best aspiring drivers in the world.

I approached my first qualifying session with the intention of re-enacting my best driving at every corner. As an inexperienced driver, just re-creating a way of driving through a corner time after time was a big challenge. It was key to posting consistent lap times. To the surprise of everyone in the championship, I qualified third on the grid.

After a short lunch break it was time for the race. I stumbled out of the Kentagon Restaurant with a bellyful of nerves and beef casserole. I was immediately accosted by a race official with a breathalyser.

I breathed gingerly into the machine. ‘Do you actually catch anyone drunk on race day?’

‘Five so far.’

I didn’t even drink, but I was apprehensive.

‘You’re all clear.’

I hurried to the pits and climbed into the car. My young mechanic straddled the top cover and heaved down on the shoulder straps with all his weight, strawberry-faced with the exertion.

After confirming that I could still breathe, he shot me a knowing smile that said, ‘One lamb, ready for slaughter.’

‘Good luck,’ he said.

I gave him a gobsmacked thumbs up. My heart rate was off the Richter scale. Wave upon wave of adrenalin hardened my veins. The back of my throat swelled, my mouth dried and the left side of my face tingled. What the hell am I doing? I was so tired. I hadn’t slept the night before and would rather have griddled my testicles on the exhaust than drive at that particular moment.

Get a grip, I thought, I’m here to get to F1. Problem was, so were the other lads.

Sweat on the pad of my left foot made my toes slip inside my boots as I depressed the clutch and nudged the gear-stick left and forward. Every movement I made felt strained and heavy.

Moving into the pit lane, I joined the two long columns of the dummy grid. After what felt like an eternity (no more than five minutes) we were waved out of the pit lane under a green flag. More adrenalin, and now I needed to piss.

The copious advice I’d been given swirled around in my head. ‘Lay some rubber on the start line for extra traction’, ‘Warm the tyres up’, ‘Anticipate the start lights’, ‘Go when the red goes out, don’t wait for the green’, ‘Don’t look in your mirrors’. After one short lap we formed up on the grid. I searched the start line gantry for the lights.

A white board with ‘five seconds’ written on it suddenly appeared from behind the gantry. Acid flooded my stomach.

Three seconds later the red lights sparked up. I knew that sometime between three and eight seconds after that they would switch to green.

The engines in front of me began revving. The driver alongside started chasing the throttle – on, off, on, off, louder and louder. Adrenalin dumped painfully into my chest and my heart slowed into a hard, raging thump. The force of the beats was so strong I had to drop my chin and open my mouth to catch a breath. I winced; my eyes glazed over. GREEN.

I bolted off the start line, then the wheels spun wildly. Another car instantly appeared to my right, then two others powered up to my left as we approached the first corner. I was jammed right in the middle.

My thumping heart slowed, crashing against my ribs with the weight of a sledgehammer. For a moment I thought the damn thing might actually stop.

I swallowed hard, gulped for air and edged into the fast sweeping right-hander at Paddock Hill. I was at the centre of a swarm of jostling machines, so close you could have covered ten of us with a blanket. Somehow my body carried on the business of driving and breathing.

The pack screamed through the dip at the bottom of the hill. The car in front bottomed out in the compression, shooting a shower of sparks at my helmet. I followed the four leaders into the tight right at Druids, narrowly avoiding the one immediately in front as he jammed on his brakes earlier than I expected.

Gears changed on auto-pilot, iron-clenched fists dragged the steering from one direction to another. We blasted through the fast Graham Hill left-hander line astern, like a rollercoaster without rails.

Wheel to wheel, nose to tail, we hammered along the short straight at nearly 100mph. As we sped into the Surtees Esses I was so close to the guy in front I couldn’t see the raised kerb past his rear wheels. My jaw clamped shut.

I somehow braked for the final corner, the right called Clearways. I went in too fast and lost control of the front wheels. I knew I’d lose a position if I couldn’t accelerate on to the straight. I forced the throttle to try and drive out of the mistake. The car was already past the limit and the rear snapped sideways. Already off line for the corner, I slid off the edge of the track into the gravel trap and towards the welcoming tyre barrier.

As the wall approached I pushed harder on the accelerator, peppering onlookers with stones from my spinning wheels but maintaining enough speed to get back on to the circuit. Having lost just one position, I rejoined the pack and we buzzed down the pit straight to complete the first lap. I was exhausted.

During the eleven laps that followed spectators were agonised and baffled by the sight of me driving defiantly on the racing line as my competitors drove for the inside, time and again, in a bid to overtake me.

My father choked his way through two packets of Marlboro in the space of twenty minutes, lighting each fresh fag from the last. Every time I came round he was shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Defend, defend, DEFEND YOUR LIIIINE!!!’

I heard nothing over the din of the engine. I was busy driving as fast as I could. Moving off line to defend meant driving slower and that didn’t compute. I stayed persistently wide, braked as late as I dared and aimed at the apex of the corners like a missile.

I was oblivious to most of my near misses, but Dad had a bird’s eye view as the other vultures pecked at my heels. Our wheels were interlocking at over 100mph and a single touch would have easily catapulted me into the air.

By some miracle, I finished unscathed having conceded a handful of positions. One of the spectators was a journalist called Charles Bradley, who had observed my antics from Clearways corner. A shard of flying gravel had cut his cheek, but he still gave me my first mention in Motor-sport News: ‘Ben is frighteningly fast …’

I was intoxicated. I’d lived more in twenty minutes than in the rest of my life put together. The time that passed between races was just that, time passing. I dreamt racing, day and night. All my aspirations now centred on becoming the best driver in the world. After a couple more races, I managed to lead one, but was harpooned out of contention by the second-placed car – yet again I’d failed to defend the corner. But the taste of potential victory was firmly entrenched. I decided I should win every time from then on. In blinkered pursuit of that goal, I discovered ever more inventive ways to have enormous accidents, from silly shunts to full-blown hospitalisation.

On the Brands GP loop, I tried to outmanoeuvre two drivers by speeding around the outside of both into the super-fast Hawthorn right-hander. The guy on the inside squeezed the one to his left who did likewise and shoved me on to the grass at 120.

I hit the Armco with such force that my head would have hit my knees had the dashboard not intervened. We never found the front left wheel, but the whole front right corner went into orbit and landed on the straight in front of my team-mate. On the second bounce it took the sidepod clean off another car, then bounded into the trees.

I finally came to rest a few hundred metres down the track, regained consciousness and slowly opened my eyes. I was coated with bright green algae that inhabited the gravel trap. Like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, I’d been slimed. The car now resembled a bathtub, a bare chassis with a single wheel loosely attached by some brake cable. My dense cranium had even broken the steering wheel.

Over time, I broke every component of the car from the drive shafts to the suspension, gearbox, engine, chassis, everything. I once tried to find a little extra power in a drag race to the chequered flag. I pushed harder on the accelerator, which broke the solid cast metal throttle stop and ripped the throttle cable out of the carburettor.

After I wrote off my third chassis, it was clear that the ‘balls out’ strategy needed fine-tuning. During qualifying at Lydden Hill I was on the limit through a fast right when I had to lift off to avoid a spinning car. Seconds later, I was spiralling through the air and sitting in a bathtub again.

Dad sprinted to my side, absolutely livid. Not only was he funding this enterprise, but it would have been his neck on the block if I’d been converted into a limbless corpse. I couldn’t make the race, so I climbed into his car for a very long, silent drive home.

I knew he was pissed from the way he was twiddling his sideburns. After half an hour he said, ‘What the fuck were you doing waving your arms around like that anyway? You could have lost an arm.’

‘I was just ducking …’

He shot me an incredulous look.

‘I’ve just had to buy that car you trashed. If they can’t bend it straight, your season’s over.’

It was my much needed wake-up call. It seemed I had an answer for every catastrophe, but no sense to avoid one. I had to preserve the car, only risking it in measured bursts when absolutely necessary.

A part-time job in a warehouse packing cheddar cheeses the size of breeze-blocks provided plenty of opportunity to analyse past events. I spent the rest of my time hanging out with my newly acquired girlfriend and practising essential driving skills in her Ford Fiesta. Georgie was a bit special in more ways than one. She could do a handbrake turn and spin the wheels at the same time. It was love at first sight.

I figured out that even if I was the best driver on a given day, I would never win every race because there were too many circumstances beyond my control. My problem was, I’d been forcing it. Every race had a natural order, a structure I had to respect and learn to predict. Once I accepted that, the frequency of my visits to the podium exceeded those to the infirmary.

I was totally focused on learning the craft. My body began reacting like an alarm clock, ‘going off’ weeks in advance of a big race. I prepared my logistics ahead of time, drove the track a million times in my head.

My naïve concept of sportsmanship took a hammering at Castle Combe. I learnt the ropes the hard way from my ‘team-mate’, a Formula First veteran who led the championship. He had a nose like a beak that found its way into my side of the garage whenever anything worthwhile was going on. Then it was all smiles, which front rollbar was I running, what tyre pressure worked best and so pleased to meet you, Mr Potential Sponsor, here’s my card.

Later the same day I was leading him through a very fast corner on the last lap. He poked his nose up my inside but I held strong on the outside. He couldn’t get through, and it felt like he steered into me and punted me off.

I slid across the grass like a demented lawnmower and rejoined to finish fifth, just behind him. A crimson haze descended over me, but I managed to resist the temptation to T-bone him on the way into the pit lane, drag him from the car and use my helmet on him as a baseball bat.

The next race was at Cadwell Park, the best track in Britain, with more pitch and fall in its curves than Pamela Anderson. I had terminal understeer in qualifying and ended up running behind my ‘mate’ in third place, but I had my evil eye on him. I drove the wheels off my machine and discovered the power of controlled aggression. The car bent to my will and unleashed a furious pace. The closer I got to my old pal, the more mistakes he made. We approached a section called ‘The Mountain’ where an S bend climbed a steep gorge and before I had the pleasure of dispatching his ass personally, he spun off the circuit. Good karma.

Motor sport was dog eat dog, which went against the grain after five years making friends for life in the process of surviving boarding school. Popularity in racing lasted as long as you were competitive, and people were prepared to go to any lengths to remain so. I found one driver stealing my engine one night; another team sabotaged my suspension. But there were always a few rays of sunshine.

The final race of the year was at Snetterton in Norfolk, which had been a Flying Fortress base in the Second World War. Two giant straights connected two lurid high-speed corners and a couple of slow ones. I managed to get the team’s senior mechanic on to my car. Colin was a grey-haired Lancastrian who’d won the championship with my team-mate. He had eyes like Master Yoda and talked me through what to do if and when I was in a position to actually win.

‘Around this track the last thing you want to do is lead the final lap. Whoever is in second will draft past the leader on the back straight unless you slow down, so don’t get stuck out in front or … Jeezus Chriist!’

Colin’s gaze suddenly disappeared some way over my shoulder. ‘Look at ’er, she’s gorgeous!’

Still grappling with his advice, I looked to up to see the blonde bomb-shell swinging down the pit lane. Glimpses of her perfectly sculpted figure appeared from beneath a leather bomber jacket as she swished back her hair and beamed in our direction.

‘That’s my girlfriend, Georgie.’

‘You must be jokin’!’

He had a point. I couldn’t quite believe it myself.

I’d met her when we were seventeen and she took my breath away. I fell in love with her on Day One – she has one of those smiles that make you feel like the six million dollar man. My mates and I were all horrid little oiks who spent our whole time playing rugby and pouring buckets of water on to girls’ heads as they walked beneath our windows, so I didn’t give much for my chances. But a few months ago I’d somehow summoned the balls to invite her to a racing dinner – a very glamorous affair (not) at Brands Hatch’s onsite hotel – where she won a tyre trolley in the raffle. She seemed to enjoy watching my car come back with fewer wheels with each successive contest. I can’t think why; she was far too attractive and kind to be with me. When she entered a room my mouth filled with tar, reducing my vocab to Neanderthal grunting. Yet here she was looking lovely and looking at me, but …

‘What 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 you hit the kerbs, it knocks the pads away from the discs. You have to pump the brake pedal back up to get them working again.’ He waved a hand up and down for emphasis.

Well, wasn’t I the moron? That kind of general knowledge would have been more useful at the start of the day, but that was how it worked with racing. You either figured it out, or got spat out.

Graham sucked his teeth with interest as he calculated my split time, acknowledging it would have put me fastest by a considerable margin. Then he looked me in the eye to ask if my neck was OK. Seemed he was warming to me after all.

The structure of the Winter Series consisted of two heats that qualified the drivers for the final at Donington – ‘winner takes all’.

Graham taught me that there were no friends in a race and to ‘kill the car’ in the warm-up lap. The difference this made to the temperature and performance of the tyres and brakes over the first lap was significant and helped launch me into the lead of the qualifying heat.

I found myself battling with a Japanese regular from the series who was pressuring me with every trick in the book. He was tapping my rear wheel to unsettle my car into the corners, then driving into the back of me in the straights. The rev counter buzzed higher as the rear wheels left the ground. The gloves came off.

I waited until he was right up my chuff and jammed on the brakes so hard his front wing went under my gearbox and lifted me into the air. All our shenanigans were closing the field up behind us.

He got a run on me down the pit straight, pulled alongside and we banged wheels as we ran neck and neck towards the first corner. The third-gear right required a severe brake to avoid the sea of sandy gravel beyond. He stayed on the outside, ballsy to say the least.

I would sooner have driven off a cliff than be outbraked. I wasn’t backing down. Neither was he, so our futures merged. His front wheel caught my rear and I flew over his sidepod. We rotated around one another in Matrix-style slow motion, and gave the pursuing pack nowhere to go but straight into us. I was T-boned and as the spinning car flew overhead its rear wheel caught my helmet.

As the dust settled in the gravel trap I thought to myself, Not again. I never felt any fear when I raced, so I had to figure out a method for avoiding dumb accidents with people. I quickly rubbed the tyre marks off my helmet – otherwise the marshals would have insisted I bought another one – and trudged out of the gravel.

Graham was not amused, calling me a rock ape. The combined qualifying results put me in twelfth for the final race on Sunday. Overtaking opportunities in down-force cars were notoriously few, so my chances of winning were slim.

On the day of the final I arrived at the circuit early, determined on a positive result. Sir Jackie had already inspected the team ahead of his sponsors and guests, which included members of from the Royal Family. Pandemonium reigned and there were red faces everywhere. The race truck was being lifted into the air on stilts in order to rotate the wheels until their Goodyear logos all faced twelve o’clock. The floor was being washed and a gearbox moved.

Roland, the number one mechanic, was putting the finishing touches to my car’s new undertray. I brought him some tea and he surprised me with a smile.

‘You guys must hate me,’ I said.

‘Nah, mate. You’re out there to win. We don’t care how many times you smash it to bits – we’ll rebuild it.’

It made all the difference having him onside. Roland increased the angle of attack of the dive plane on the front wing by raising it and screwing the bolt into its new hole. ‘Adding a hole of wing’ meant I could steer better behind the jet wash of the other racers. He asked what I thought of our chances. I told him I thought we could win.

The team’s PR lady summoned me to the corporate hospitality unit with my team-mate, reigning Irish Formula Ford Champion Tim Mullen. We arrived on the team’s golf buggy at a marquee the size of a football pitch for Jackie to introduce us to the sponsors.

Three hundred pairs of eyes turned in our direction from across the silver service. Tim’s rusty red suit had seen five innings too many, and my scrunched black number was more bin man than Batman. Then Sir Jackie appeared, the triple Formula 1 World Champion, former Olympic clay pigeon wizard and one of the most meticulous and successful drivers of all time.

Decked out in immaculate tartan trousers with creases that could slice roast beef, a beautifully cut tweed jacket and a bonnie cap, Jackie had the presence of a laird. He gave us both the once over and his beady eyes fell on me like a hawk. I sensed there might be warmth behind them if you were in reach of the podium.

The PR told him our starting positions. ‘Tim is seventh and Ben is twelfth after a shunt in the second heat.’ I wished she hadn’t.

‘Looks like you have some work to do today, lads.’

Och aye, that we did.

Jackie picked up the microphone and delivered a perfectly manicured talk about the team and the format of the day. We were excused.

I knew I had to impress him if I wanted to stay with PSR, and that meant really delivering in the final. I had the overtaking opportunities mapped out in my mind, the perfect start and the fastest laps. Scripts rarely survived first contact with the enemy, but preparing for success improved your odds.

I strapped in and sat on the grid with nothing left to consider except:‘patience, measured bursts’. Jackie made his extended walk down the grid, chatted with Graham for a bit before turning to me. ‘Just remember, lad, it’s what you have up here [pointing to my head], not down there[pointing to my balls] that wins races. The difference between the exceptionally brave and the plain stupid is a fine line.’

I listened carefully to the great man’s advice, but something told me that I would definitely need my balls for this one.

The personnel cleared the grid – bar Roland, who held the jump battery. You fell in love with that last man the way a patient loves his nurse. Before going solo into the unknown, he was your final contact with the world. He signalled a thumbs up and cut the umbilical.

I stared at the pack of racers ahead. The green flag sent us off for the warm-up lap. Cars wove from side to side; one or two accelerated past their closest competitors and nearly collided. Everyone had eaten their Shredded Wheat that morning; no prisoners would be taken in the main event.

The formation closed up at the final chicane. I jumped on and off the throttle and brakes to ensure they were hot as hell. I found my pair of solitary black lines on the grid. You guys are going down …

First gear, revs to 5,400, the clutch bit.

The bright yellow five-second board rose over the gantry. Engines began pulsing. I crept forward an inch.

Red lights came on, then straight off; release, I was gone.

Everyone else froze, I powered off the line, instantly passing two crawlers and sliding past a third as I made the dreaded gear-change through the dogleg from first to second that could put you into a false neutral, with the race passing you by.

The drivers criss-crossed, searching for track position on the dash to the first corner. A queue stacked up on the inside, so I lunged for the outside to pass two on the brakes, hanging on as we squeezed over the jagged exit kerbs. I emerged wheel to wheel with another driver as we accelerated towards Craners. I had the inside line but on cold tyres the odds were even. He lifted first and I surged past. Sixth place already and closing on fifth.

We snaked through the back section of Donington and towards the chicane behind the pits where Jackie was hosting his VIPs. I wasn’t lined up close enough to have a pop at the guy in front until he hesitated and braked early. I accepted the invitation and zapped past. I rode the inside kerbs and slithered sideways on to the straight, adjusting my sights to the view of just four cars ahead.

My Japanese friend in his silver bullet was pushing hard behind the lead group. I gave him a few close-ups in his mirrors to let him know he was next on my menu but it was hard following through the fast turns; you lost the air over the front wing and understeered wide. Running wide compounded the loss of grip because you ended up on the dirty section of track that was rarely driven on, typically covered in ‘marbles’ – 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. He’s cross.’ She sighed. ‘You’re both too alike.’

Uri arrived in the Grand Prix paddock as we were celebrating my team-mate’s birthday a few hours before the start of the race. Brian’s dad asked him to bend the knife we used to cut the cake, then rubbed it on the exposed part of the race car’s exhaust system for luck. Uri left for the grandstand, setting off a chorus of car alarms in his wake.

The race got under way. Brian and I did our best to impress the Formula 1 teams in attendance, but he started to lose power and limped back to the pits. Joe Bremner, his number one mechanic, was first on the scene.

‘What the bloody hell’s gone on here?’

The exhaust had neither bent nor cracked; it had completely disintegrated – but only where Uri’s knife had touched it. I don’t buy into hocus-pocus, but none of the mechanics had ever seen anything like it before.

We didn’t see the fabled forkbender again after that.

I spent a couple of years bouncing around America and Europe, maturing my skills alongside some truly great drivers like Scott Dixon and Takuma Sato. Scott went on to become the king of Indycar Racing. When I partnered him in Indy Lights he was one wild Kiwi who partied himself horizontal. He could also turn on the steely-eyed resolve in a heartbeat when it counted.

I also partnered Honda’s Formula 1 protégé Takuma Sato, a wily, wiry, utterly fearless Japanese. We won races in International F3 and I came second in the Marlboro Masters World Series round at Zandvoort. Taku outqualified me in the dry, but in testing at Spa in Belgium I was comfortably faster in the wet. My car was so good that I was the only driver taking the infamous Eau Rouge corner flat out. As the race itself got under way, the waterlogged track was quickly obscured by a dense mist of spray. Taku pulled into the lead and was first to come within sight of the teams as he blatted down the pit straight, towards Eau Rouge …

Boyyo, Taku’s sublime race engineer, was perched on the pit wall. He dropped his lap chart, hastily grasped his radio and whimpered ‘No Taku, don’t …’

The rain was much heavier than it had been during the test. Taku made it past the first painted kerb with his foot welded to the floor, ran into a pool of water, aquaplaned and spun 180 degrees, straight into the tyre wall. It was pure 24-carat balls, and I absolutely loved him for that.

My performances were enough to gain some interest from a couple of Formula 1 teams and I investigated an opportunity to become the test driver for Arrows. This was the break I’d been longing for since Day One. I didn’t have a manager, so Dad came to the meeting to impart some common business sense to the discussion.

We had a chat with a couple of nice chaps from their commercial team. We guzzled tea and biscuits in the boardroom until it was time to bring out the brass tacks. The test drive was mine for a very reasonable £1.5 million.

I tried not to choke on my tea and wondered what they charged per gulp. I was appalled at my sheer ignorance of the industry and the level of finance shaping these decisions. The sponsors who had supported me so far would turn tail and head for the hills.

But I had a back-up plan. It worked for Michael Schumacher; maybe it would work for me.

Chapter 5

Le Mans 24

Two million roadside spectators watched the 1903 race from Paris to Bordeaux. Two hundred and seventy-five drivers slammed their cumbersome rides of metal and wood up and down dale for the glory of a face full of dust, in what was dubbed the ‘race of death’ after numerous fatalities along its 351-mile stretch.

Road racing was shut down, but their mission to measure the advancement of design through competition survived.

The Automobile Club de l’Ouest responded by creating a closed Grand Prix circuit at Le Mans in 1906, and the twenty-four hour course along the main roads to Mulsanne and back via Arnage in 1923.

The route from Arnage was later altered to take in the fearsome Porsche curves, a sequence of fast encounters where the outcome of each bend determined the fate of the one following. A last-ditch heave on the brakes at the Ford chicanes led onto the pit straight for a glancing moment at the pit board before engaging on a lap where 85 per cent of the journey would be spent on full throttle or braking because your life depended on it.

I travelled to Le Mans in 1997, to pre-qualify a 600bhp turbo-charged Porsche GT2 for the 65th outing of the endurance classic. By lunchtime the car was ready and I was blasting over the kerbs of Dunlop chicane, under the bridge and down to the Esses where you cornered at a seemingly impossible speed, veered left, then shimmied right over a blind rise.

Tertre Rouge was no mere dalliance. The ancient flowing right had to be taken balls to the wall in fourth gear to v-max the motor on the 4-mile Mulsanne straight. The Porsche 456s of the Eighties stretched their legs to 253mph here before the chicanes were put in. I settled for a humble 194, dispatching the chicanes with a twitter from the abs, hurling in and chasing away again, hanging on to the bouncing tail. I was still learning the place as I went; at 8.5 miles per lap it took over ten minutes just to run three laps. Then I noticed black smoke billowing over the treetops.

I kept on it as far as Mulsanne corner, the slowest point on the circuit, with a curved braking point that welcomed the brave and the good to overcook it and wind up at a roundabout full of locals taking photos and gnawing French sticks. Been there, done that, worn the onions.

The Porsche bucked from the hard lip of the blue and yellow apex kerb and stopped just in time to keep me on the black. From a virtual standstill I nuked the gas, spooled up the turbo and began the long charge to a top speed of 202 on the approach to Indianapolis, the fastest road race corner in the world. But that smoke was too much to be a BBQ. My heart wasn’t in it any more. I coasted and turned right at Arnage towards the Porsche Curves.

There was smoke everywhere, mostly from the trees where a raging ball of fire was being tackled by the marshals. A few bits of torn body-work lay on the grass along with something that didn’t belong there and I wished I hadn’t seen – the shocking remains of a helmet belonging to a young French knight called Sebastian Enjolras, who had been killed at high speed moments earlier.

Our entry was withdrawn before the race and it would be four years before I could return to continue the journey.

There was never a straight line in my career. I was given a drive at Donington in an ageing Le Mans prototype, the highest category above GT. The car I wanted to be in was the Ascari piloted by South African Werner Lupberger, a silver arrow with vents like shark gills, a razor-sharp nose and plenty of sponsors on the livery. It was reliable, fast and sexy. My machine was dayglo orange dotted with black rectangles that neatly camouflaged the tank tape holding together the bodywork.

Werner was on pole. As he led the field in this round of the FIA World Sportscar Championship, his engine cut out. My misfiring heap was barely mobile at the time and promptly died at the same corner, so I walked back to the pits with him.

Werner was as brown as a berry, with hair like a hedgehog and a thick Afrikaner accent. He looked exceptionally fit. In the course of conversation he mentioned that Ascari was running a series of shoot-out tests to find him a team-mate. He suggested I go for it.

The team was owned by Klaas Zwart, a Dutch engineering genius who made a billion from the oil industry. Klaas was bald and tanned and never sat still.

‘There’s twenty guys on the phone right now, F1 drivers some of them, and none of them can match Werner’s pace in the Ascari. Tell me why I want you in my team …’

I told him I would win races, that I was the man to push Werner, that no one else would work harder. Klaas took me at my word and arranged an evaluation test. Next stop, Barcelona.

Even at 7am the heat was making its presence felt. Ascari’s number one mechanic, Spencer, looked me over with unsmiling eyes. His work area was spotless, every spanner, every component just so. We made a fitted foam seat and I asked about adjusting the pedals.

‘That’s how Werner drives it. Should be good enough for you.’

The Circuit de Catalunya had some brutally fast corners that went on for ever. The other turns flowed from one to the next, giving little respite. I watched Werner exit the fast corner on to the pit straight at 130mph. Within 300 metres of him stamping his foot to the floor, it was licking along at 180 and generating nearly 4G in the corners. He brought it into the pits and the belts over his chest rose and fell as he drew breath. He stripped to the waist, revealing muscles as shredded as Rocky Balboa’s, then chewed into his drinks bottle like a butcher’s dog.

I climbed aboard, tightened the straps until I could barely move and scanned the array of switches and LED lights that lined the dashboard. I began firing the engine and heard the most beautiful bark of V10 power. The Ascari LMP’s Judd F1 engine churned out 650bhp on a Lola chassis. With no power steering it demanded hand-to-hand combat.

Werner chilled out and enjoyed the show as I spent my first laps hitting the rev limiter. The Ascari accelerated so fast that you had to pull through the gears on the sequential box as fast as your arm could snatch the lever. The power would spin the wheels in fourth gear on a dry track, so you didn’t switch off for a second. The wind at 180 blasted through the open cockpit and tried to rip your head off.

Braking from high speed using the giant F1-style carbon disc brakes involved standing on the pedal. I applied twice my body weight in pushing force to activate the down-force grip. After twenty laps I lost all feeling in my right foot.

The faster I dived into the corners, the more the wings gripped and the heavier it steered. It was like going ten rounds in the boxing ring and I was hanging off the ropes. My arms were jacked full of lactic acid and the temptation to ease up on the wheel was immense, but that meant slowing down or ending up in the wall. I loved this beast.

When I returned to the pits, our race engineer appeared and stepped casually in front of the car with his clipboard. Brian was wiry and had a moustache like Dick Dastardly. ‘How was that, then?’

There was no disguising the effort I’d put in. My chest was heaving and I was sweating bullets. ‘This car … is awesome … the best thing I’ve ever driven.’

Werner asked me how I found the steering by comparison to Formula 3.

‘F3 was a piece of piss.’

‘Yessus, man,’ he grinned. ‘Wait till you try it on new tyres; that makes it even heavier.’

At the end of the day Brian gave his verdict on my performance. Werner’s time charts were metronomic, mine weren’t, but I was the first driver they’d tested who could match his pace on old tyres. The seat was mine. I was signed by a works team.

To max the speed of a Le Mans car for four hours at a time required a supreme level of strength and endurance. It meant starting a completely new physical training regime.

I spent four hours a day in the gym, pushing tonnes of weights in a variety of unpleasant ways – attaching them to my head, running with them and pushing repetitions until I could barely lift a pencil. Then I’d run or swim for hours to build stamina.

Back in the days of leather helmets and goggles, an endurance race was a different kettle of fish. When Duncan Hamilton won Le Mans in 1953, he was so drunk that the team offered him coffee during the pit stops to keep him going. He refused, accepting only brandy.

These days Le Mans was a twenty-four-hour sprint. The cars withstood thousands of gear-shifts, millions of piston revolutions and constant forces on every component. You couldn’t afford to break them, but you couldn’t afford to slow down either. You took turns with your team-mates to thrash the living hell out of it. We drove every lap like a qualifier. The physical and mental commitment to maintaining that performance was absolute, making it the purest all-round challenge in motor racing.

The eclectic mix of experienced amateurs and professionals raced an equally diverse range of machinery, from brawny Ferrari and Porsche GTs that resembled road cars to the 700 horsepower flying saucers loosely called ‘prototypes’ – basically Formula 1 cars wearing pretty dresses.

Audi’s prototype was the one to beat. Their mechanical reliability was matched by outright pace. A gearbox change used to take a couple of hours in the old days. Now when Audi blew one, they bolted on another, complete with suspension joints, in just four minutes.

In 2001 the rain was torrential for nineteen hours of the twenty-four, and the swarm of cars skated along the straights like skipping stones.

From midnight until four in the morning I hammered around an eight-mile track, avoiding an accident every time I put the power down.

On my first visit to Le Mans I was lucky to even make the graveyard shift, following a disastrous run in the daytime. The crew had whipped off the wheels and banged a fresh set of tyres on to the red-hot discs whilst I stayed in the car. As the fuel hose slammed home and started pumping, I felt cold liquid fill the seat of my pants.

I thumbed the radio button. ‘I think I’ve got fuel running down my neck.’

A look at the fuel rig revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but my backside was swimming in icy liquid.

There was no time for debate. Besides, I couldn’t believe it myself. I drove away and my skin began to tingle at first, then started burning. This wasn’t imaginary. I was forced to pit again. Werner was in the crew bus attending to the blisters on his hands and caught the first glimpse of my burning buttocks.

‘Vok, you all right, man? That’s one hot botty.’

Hours later it was my turn to drive again. Raindrops the size of golf balls created eruptions in the standing water. A journalist saw me waiting my turn in the garage and said, ‘You must be absolutely dreading this. It’s your first time here, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t wait to get out there,’ I said, jogging on the spot. ‘This is what it’s all about.’

He probably wrote me off as cannon fodder.

The team manager was Ian Dawson, who cut his teeth at Lotus Formula 1 team back in the days of Colin Chapman. He still had the retro moustache to prove it. Ian appeared at my side, lifted one of his radio cans and yelled into the front of my helmet. ‘It’s absolutely torrential out there. Harri’s just done three complete 360 spins down the straight at 160 miles an hour. He’s coming in this lap. We’re bloody lucky to still have a car. We’re running seventeenth. There’s plenty of time. Just take it easy.’

The intensity in his voice spoke volumes. I was holding the baby.

An empty space in front of the garage was surrounded by the Ascari boys. Fireproof masks covered their faces, but I could see Don the mad Kiwi itching his nose with the wheel gun, big Dave on the fuel hose flicking his ankle to loosen off, Spencer with the other gun bouncing on his quads to warm up.

At any moment the space would be filled and I would have twenty seconds to climb in, strap up and switch on.

Every one of the boys had a critical job to do and they shared the pressure of the moment. The fuel man had to ram the hose home in a single clean movement. It sounded easy, but it wasn’t. If he got it wrong he could barbecue every member of the team.

The mechanics on the pneumatic guns had practised the drill over and over again, so they could get clear as fast as possible without cross-threading a wheel nut. If any one of us made the slightest cock-up, it would cost seconds of hard-fought track position.

The car appeared, larger than life and shedding a heap of water. Harri Toivonen fought the belts off and leapt out. I barged past him and took his place. The seat felt wet and warm as my suit absorbed the water.

Harri lifted his visor and helped me with my belts. His face was red, eyes bulging, chest heaving. I pulled up both thumbs to let him know I was in OK and could finish the job myself.

The Ascari dropped on to the deck; the signal was given. My hands were poised over the ignition and start buttons and I cranked the motor. It was already in first gear. A touch on the throttle provoked a lightning howl. The Kraken was fully awake. I slipped the clutch and pulled away into the night.

I was soaked to the skin within seconds. Goblets of water fell out of the sky, whirring towards me at warp speed. As I slid under the Dunlop bridge 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 ringing in my ears. ‘If you end up using this toolkit you’re probably fucked. Just do yer best.’

I tore off the electrical tape, picked up the mini flashlight and checked all the fuses were pushed in. They were. I switched ECUs, the engine’s brain, plugged the new one into the mother board and flicked the ignition back on to reboot. No dice. I got back on the radio. ‘The new ECU isn’t working. Any ideas?’

‘Wait a minute.’ Then, after a long pause, ‘We’re coming out to you. Stay right there.’

Where was I meant to go …?

There must be something I could do. I looked across to the giant plasma screen on the other side of the track and saw a small Japanese driver having similar problems. He was staring down at his car with his helmet on and speaking to his team on a tiny mobile phone. After a minute he started gesticulating wildly, hurled the phone into the tarmac and stamped on it twenty times with both feet. Bad reception can really get you down.

Men in orange suits wanted me out of the car, but if I walked too far away it would be classed as ‘abandonment’ and could eliminate us from the race. Ian and Spencer turned up but couldn’t find the fault.

As a last-ditch effort I put the car in first gear and bunny-hopped it 20metres using the kick from the starter motor. This really upset the French marshals, who chased after me shaking their fists until the battery ran out of juice. Our race was over.

It was gut-wrenching. We came back to a warm reception in the pits.

They had done an incredible job, especially Brian. His beady eyes had disappeared into his skull. Guys like him never slept and he was still reviewing telemetry screens long after everyone else had cleared off. He dragged me into his data den. ‘One of your lap times was ten seconds faster than anybody else on the circuit. TEN! Bloody brilliant. Looks like the sodding fuel pump packed in. Some tossing little wire that burned out, a fifty pence component, I bet.’

Hearing that we had paced faster than anyone for nearly four hours numbed some of the disappointment, but nothing compared to actually finishing the race.

The Audis continued their faultless run to victory the following day. Our crew fell asleep around the pit. Sleep was hard to come by. When my eyelids eventually closed, the dotted white lines of Mulsanne were still whipping through my retinas at 200mph.

Chapter 6

Daytona Endurance

After the dust settled from Le Mans, I started talking to some of the large manufacturer teams about driving opportunities for the following year. I was duly informed by one representative that they were ‘talking to big names from Formula 1’. Ben was only a three-letter word, so she had me there.

Fortunately Ascari kept me for the following season for a programme that included two of the most prestigious sportscar races in the world: the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona followed by the 12 Hours of Sebring.

I decided it was time to take the plunge and leave my day job. In between races, I had been working as a brand manager for Scalextric, which included a cosy five-hour daily commute on top of training. It was fun coming up with ideas for toys. I broke new ground by creating the first Bart Simpson Scalextric set, although I got into a little trouble for developing super-sticky magnets that made the model cars travel faster than light. My friends loved it too, dubbing me the ‘smallest racing driver in the world’ and referring to my backside as a hollow extrusion.

Well, this toy racer was off to Daytona, the birthplace of NASCAR. In the 1950s moonshine runners flocked from the southern counties to race the long flats of Daytona Beach; the best drivers of the Prohibition era had honed their skills outrunning the police on country roads. Here they belted along the beachfront avenue and blasted sand into the faces of spectators. People liked that, so in 1957 race promoter Bill France built the biggest, fastest Speedway the world had ever seen.

The 2.5-mile tri oval with its 31-degree banking was colossal. Even grizzly racers were shocked by the scale of the ‘Big D’ and the sprawling edifice of its surrounding grandstands. ‘There wasn’t a man there who wasn’t scared to death of the place,’ Lee Petty once said. The whitewashed wall that encased the Speedway was ever ready to punish the over-zealous.

An infield road course had been constructed inside the oval for sport-scar racing, and that’s where we came in. My prototype rattled so quickly through the banking at Turn One that for the first few laps my eyeballs couldn’t keep up with the sweeping sheet of asphalt. It was dizzyingly fast; a 180mph turn, tighter than a jet fighter could pull.

Racing a prototype in Europe through a packed field of GT cars had taught me plenty of cut and thrust. The difference at Daytona was the sheer volume of slower traffic in the tight infield section. I now realised how Batman felt driving the streets of Gotham after igniting the after-burners on a Monday morning. If you gave any quarter, the cars you wanted to muscle past sensed hesitation and only made it harder to get by.

Getting past a prototype of equal pace was more challenging. I closed on one at 170. I couldn’t recognise his helmet but his car’s body language looked edgy. The banking amplified the suspension compression from tons of down-force and the bellies of both our machines slammed the deck at every bump. My aero went light in his dead air and I hung on to the steering pretty tight while the whole world wobbled around me.

We were bearing down on a pair of GTs running line astern. I had a good slingshot from their slipstream, moved one lane higher towards the wall and overtook. The prototype didn’t see me coming and swung out with me alongside.

The banking was beginning to flatten out for the straight, so this was not a good time to change direction. The only space left for me on the track was the high side, which was covered in sand and marbles, so that’s where I went. The steering instantly went light as the slick tyres lost contact with asphalt, scrabbled with the dirt and pointed me at the wall. A microsecond later, the rear lost traction. As the camber fell away I had to get out of the throttle and tap some brake to nudge the front away from the wall.

I passed the prototype with a front wheel locked, pitched sideways so close to the wall I thought it would shave the rear wing endplate. It may have looked ugly but I made it stick.

I cruised the pit lane later to find the guy I overtook and maybe share a laugh. There he was, overalls tied at the waist, wearing a baseball cap with big aviator shades drooping off the end of his nose. His neck was frail for a racing driver, but not for a 77-year-old. His voice sounded familiar as he chatted to his mechanic, then Butch Cassidy’s clear blue eyes saw me coming. I froze. Paul Newman, star of the silver screen for more than half a century, racer of old and charitable angel who parachuted millions of dollars into worthy causes, was the coolest dude I ever saw. And that’s exactly how I left him. He had enough people bothering him for a piece of his time.

Werner was on spectacular form and stuck the Ascari Judd on pole position. He spent the afternoon flexing his muscles under the Florida sunshine and cooking the ‘brai’ so that ‘none of you Engleesh burn my meat’.

My duty at Daytona was to develop an experimental turbo-charged engine in the sister Ascari. The words ‘experimental’ and ‘endurance’ made poor bedfellows. Not only was the engine gutless and expensive, but parts of the rear wing kept falling off.

During the race I had to watch my mirrors to keep an eye on things. After the third pit stop to repair the wing we realised that the entire wing post was being shaken loose by the deafening harmonics of the engine. It was deemed too dangerous to continue, so that was the end of that. Maybe one day we would finish an enduro event.

The twelve-hour race at Sebring was half the duration of Daytona 24 but twice as exhausting. Mars had a more temperate climate than Florida in March. And the Martians themselves were pretty conservative by comparison to the 150,000 fans who camped at the track during America’s spring break. The usual petrolheads were joined by tens of thousands of college kids who partied hard. The police brought an armoured tank to keep them under control.

Swarms of them descended from the nearby beaches for a look at some fast noisy things. Tanned babes in scant bikinis toting dollar fifty plastic necklaces exchanged them at every opportunity for bodily fluids or a flash of flesh. The race fans built their own bars, converted school buses into multi-storey viewing galleries and invented my favourite gadget of all time. A 200 horsepower engine beneath the cushions enabled the devoted fan to admire the racing from the comfort of his own motorised sofa from a variety of vantage points around the infield.

The heat built up to 90 degrees with 100 per cent humidity. All the effort of physical training was worth every bead of sweat when you set about the track. It was as rough as hell. The surface was a bumpy patchwork of different materials and there were some fast, challenging corners with minimal run-off. You had to chase the heavy steering for every second as the grip came and went. The constant jarring wreaked havoc on the vehicle’s drive train, and the tyres shredded from all the wheelspin and hard braking. We ran the hardest compound tyre Dunlop could supply us.

Avoiding dehydration was a constant battle. The vital fluids in the car’s drink system tended to boil by the time it reached your mouth and scald your lips. You thought you were warm whilst driving, but when you pulled up at the end of a stint the rush of air would stop and you found yourself in the asphyxiation chamber. I sprinted from the car, pulled up my fireproof leggings and stood in a bucket of ice water, looking like John Cleese in his Monty Python days.

One of our truckies was dating a local hussy with an altogether scientific approach to surviving the weather. Red leathery skin and greasy brown hair was her defence against the sun, and she arrived every morning with an icy slab of Budweiser beer. From then until dusk, when she emptied the last can, not a single drop of water passed her hirsute lips, and her vocabulary was, like, whatever. ‘See ya’ll in the mornin’, boys, baaaaaaarp.’ A real southern belle.

I was partnered with Justin Wilson, who had just won the Formula 3000 Championship. It was great having him on board, in no small part because he was happy with my only standing order: ‘No pissing in the seat.’ This feral habit was pioneered by many notable drivers including Nelson Piquet, who apparently used to wet his pants at the end of a Formula 1 race and leave the gift for his mechanics.

As team leader in my car I drew the lucky straw to run double stints when our third driver was injured in the pit lane. That meant running flat out for just over two hours between fuelling and driver changes. The combination of the continuous high G forces and the way the car was always twitching tested driver and machine to the brink of failure, making Sebring a rite of passage. Even the track started melting part way through the race, so we had to run behind a safety car whilst emergency repairs were made.

Performance-wise we were right on the pace, having ditched the Turbo for the magnificent Judd. The Audis were running away on their grippy Michelin tyres, which at the time gave them several seconds a lap over our Dunlops. Our hard compound came to life when it mixed with the softer rubber on the track, which meant our pace quickened as the race went on. We began catching the leaders. Justin and I took turns putting the hammer down, competing with each other until we crossed the line in fifth place. At last, we had a finish!

Werner placed behind us in the sister car; beating him meant we had done something right. He had attacked Sebring with his customary gusto and kept us primed throughout the weekend with energy drinks.

At one point Werner’s co-driver made an impromptu pit stop in the night and caught everyone off guard. Afrika-Bo was snoring away in the coach when Ian Dawson burst in and dragged him to his feet. Werner grabbed his helmet, leapt into the car and drove off. His helmet was still fitted with a fully tinted daytime visor, so he couldn’t see a thing. Without floodlights, his task was as dangerous as a bush baby asking a hyena for a shoulder rub. He somehow managed to drive an hour-long stint within three tenths of our pace.

We packed our bags for Europe and geared up for Le Mans. I set about an extensive tyre-testing programme with Dunlop, and Klaas threw every resource at the project to give us a credible shot at winning the 24-hour classic this time round.

The new Ascari KZ1 supercar was on display to the crowds after years of development; this was the road car our racing project set out to promote. With all the lessons learnt from the previous year, everyone was confident of a result.

I partnered Werner and he started the race. The 60 cars filed on to the start/finish straight, and when they dropped the hammer my hair stood on end. The atmosphere was buzzing, doubly so because the 2002 World Cup was going on and the English fans opposite our pit were updating us on the England vs Denmark game using their own scoreboard. They went berserk as each of England’s three goals hit the back of the net.

Werner was whipping through the forest towards Indianapolis corner at 220mph. He lifted to turn right and the rear suspension collapsed. The rear hit the floor, lost aero grip and sent him into a horrific spin. He flew across the gravel, back on to the track and cracked into the wall at over 100 times the force of gravity.

Spencer was the first of our crew on the scene. ‘Luckily Werner’s head took most of the impact,’ he said later. ‘And there was nuffink in there to damage.’

The car was toast but Werner spent several minutes trying to get the engine going in spite of pleas from the officials. He only gave up when Spencer assured him the car was actually in two pieces.

Regardless of how the suspension fault occurred, my gut feeling was that the Ascari project was at an end. It couldn’t carry on without a major sponsor. We’d needed that Le Mans result. Come July, I was looking for a job.

I phoned every team in the book for a drive, in every series from Le Mans to Formula 1 to NASCAR. One call paid off in September just a few days before the inaugural Indycar race in the UK. I’d been bugging the life out of the organisers for a drive, and at the last minute the Series Director rang and asked what I was doing that weekend.

‘Coming to Rockingham to watch the Champ Car race.’

‘Well, bring your helmet and overalls, there’s a drive for you in the support race.’

Rockingham’s newly formed programme was based on NASCAR, America’s most popular racing series. One in three Americans was a fan; viewing audiences were enormous and the sponsorship and advertising revenues ran into billions of dollars. The stadiums, cars and fan base were all vast.

The formula for success was simple: they raced stock cars based on America’s three most popular sedans that were virtually identical in performance and available to anyone. These agricultural machines were built of tube steel, with clunking metal gear-shifters straight off a Massey Ferguson and snarling V8 motors. The circuits were mostly ovals where you only steered left. The cars were set up with most of their wheels pointing that way – so much so that you had to steer right just to drive one in a straight line.

Much to the amusement of the Americans, the UK series was called ‘Ascar’, prompting the enduring question: ‘You race Ass-Car?’ The packed grid boasted top British drivers like World Rally Champion Colin McRae, Touring Car Champion Jason Plato, some F1 testers and competitors from the USA.

They raced wheel to wheel at Rockingham’s 1.5-mile Speedway at continuous speeds of up to 180mph. Rockingham was purpose built in an industrial backwater near Corby, Northants, a town famous for … not very much. The stadium rose out of the ground like a modern Colosseum amidst a sea of tarmac parking for thousands of spectators. It was American-style BIG, with packed grandstands just metres back from the action. The track was wide enough to fit six cars side by side with gentle banking to assist the flow of speed through the four corners.

Europeans largely regarded oval racing as boring, having only seen it on television. When you attended a live race, you realised the droning pack of cars were largely out of control. It was a thrilling high-speed spectacle. The question wasn’t whether they would crash, but when and how hard.

My car was owned by Mark Proctor, a Goliath of a Yorkshireman who also competed in the series. It was his spare, and looked like many of its vital components had been cannibalised. I sat inside its spacious cabin behind a steering wheel big enough for a bus and rearranged some electrical wiring that dangled from the roof. I resolved not to judge a book by its cover. The old girl might have it where it counts.

She didn’t.

After missing the test session with an engine problem, I got to grips with my first stock car in the open qualifying session and discovered why NASCAR racers described understeer as ‘push’. Whenever I went hard into a corner, the apex repelled the car as if it were the like pole of another magnet. I qualified two places from last and contemplated hanging myself from the wiring that had come loose again.

In the parc fermé before the race, a sports agent saw me leaning over my car at the tail end of the pre-formed grid. I tried hiding but he caught me.

‘I see you’re going well then!’

I smiled through clenched teeth. ‘I won’t be here long.’

At the rolling start, the cars sped into the first corner in side-by-side formation and slithered into the turn as they lost down-force in the hole they cut through the air. The volume of air being pushed in all directions was enough to barge neighbouring cars aside and affect their handling.

I felt the changing air pressures immediately in my inner ear. By nosing inside the car in front you could use the air buffeting from your bonnet to kick out his tail; by running outside you could suck away his air and make him ‘push’. To exacerbate your opponent’s handling problems, you sat in the same position for a few laps until his tyres burnt out.

My dog of a car floated like a butterfly in the wake of dirty air behind the other racers and stuck to the track like a squashed toad. In ‘clean air’ it was rubbish, so I had to leapfrog from one victim to the next without delay. The drivers made it hard. When people moved over on me I stuck my nose into their side and pushed back; they called it ‘rubbing’. I had a few close encounters with the wall, and at 160mph it puckered up your ass cheeks tighter than a lobster’s en route to the boiling pot.

This style of physical racing really suited me and before I knew it the race was over. Having started eighteenth, I finished on the podium in third.

If I was lucky, my performance might secure a drive for the following season. The prize for winning the Championship was a test in American NASCAR.

I still spent hours, days, months on the phone calling teams and looking for sponsors. Nothing. I offered advertising agencies the marketing opportunity of a lifetime to back the first British NASCAR Champion. I hit the Yellow Pages and talked the hind leg off alcohol firms, factories and pizza chains. Even as I did it my objectives felt increasingly shallow when I considered the host of causes around the globe that money could be more fruitfully spent on.

After another day of having the phone slammed down on me, the manager of a local automotive company gave me some air-time.

‘The last racing driver who asked me for sponsorship was Damon Hill,’ he said. He was nibbling the bait; time to reel him in.

‘Of course,’ I enthused. ‘And he went on to win the World Championship.’

‘Yeah,’ he chuckled. ‘The answer’s the same now as it was then. No.’

Perhaps publicity would help attract sponsorship. I thumbed the Rolodex and spoke to every men’s magazine editor in the galaxy, then the TV executives. I did a screen test with Channel 4, had an interview with Fifth Gear and drove a Ford Focus for some bloke at Dunsfold. Nothing had come of it.

I maintained a punishing physical training regime in the expectation that everything would work out for the best. It was like flogging a dead horse. I wondered how long I could hold out in hope of a drive without a job to support me. After seven months of climbing the walls, I knew the answer.

By March 2003 all the serious championship drives were gone, and in motor racing you were quickly forgotten. I had dedicated my life to racing, subjugated everything else that mattered and proved that I had the right stuff, but it didn’t matter.

Without a sense of purpose I had no zest for life and felt I hardly recognised my reflection in the mirror. I couldn’t bear sitting around watching life pass me by. It was time for a new direction.

I used to read about the lives of British soldiers like General de la Billière, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Andy McNab, and I drew inspiration from their daring adventures. Even the titles of their books struck a chord: Looking for Trouble, Living Dangerously and Immediate Action. The more I read, the more I understood that military service had more to do with protecting life than taking it.

After school I’d passed the Regular Commissions Board to attend Sandhurst and become an army officer. I took part in an exercise that simulated warfare in built-up areas, with the Royal Irish Regiment and Marine Commandos being attacked by Paratroopers.

In the midst of the smoke, gunfire and camouflage paint, someone mistook me for a serving officer and handed me an assault rifle, so I made myself useful. There were bouts of furious activity and aggression, diving through windows, crashing down staircases and constantly coming under fire as the enemy came at us from all sides. Amidst the confusion, my fellow soldiers looked after one another like brothers. Covered in grime and sweat, they remained alert, orderly and intelligent. I admired their self-discipline and sharp humour, but above all the gleam in their eyes.

I rang the recruiting office of an elite Army Reserve Regiment, an Airborne Unit that recruited civilians, and left a message that I wanted to join. Unlike most of the calls I made that month, these guys actually rang back.

Chapter 7

The New Stig

Finally I heard back from Andy Wilman. It seemed that I did have a future with Top Gear, but I was to speak to no one about it. My first tasking was something called a ‘powertest’. I packed my gear and made my way to the airfield.

I pulled up a few hundred metres short of the security gate and ran a mental checklist: No names, no personal info … No unnecessary introductions … Look the part, act the part.

I pulled a black balaclava over my melon and admired the view in the head mirror. Yep, you look like a terrorist.

The security guard approached me more cautiously this time, noting the registration plates in case these were his final steps on mother earth. I wound down the window and hailed him.

‘Morning. I’m with Top Gear.’

He broke into a relieved smile, waved me through and returned to his cheese and pickle.

I drove on to the concrete staging area. Tripods and cameras and black travel boxes full of kit were strewn everywhere, and the place was seething with camera crew. I had no idea what any of them were doing, but they seemed very busy doing it.

Several had noticed the suicide bomber who had just drawn up beside them. I was bringing unnecessary attention to myself, so I climbed out and made my way as anonymously as possible towards the toxic cabin.

I loitered near the cardboard cut-out of John Prescott, waiting for some sign of Andy Wilman. Under his leadership, Top Gear had been through a successful revamp following its demise in the Nineties, but it remained essentially a car review programme. As I joined in the second year of the new format, it was as popular as ever, with over two million viewers. You’d think they could have spent a few quid doing up the place. It was the pits.

After five minutes there were signs of movement down the dim corridor. A young guy with a Tintin hairdo and Elvis sunglasses appeared, chatting to a skinny nerd in an Adidas shell suit. They walked straight past.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Whooooooaaa,’ Tintin shrieked, leaping through the air as if someone had just plugged him into the National Grid.

Back on the ground, he started to laugh.

‘You must be Ben.’ He waved a hand. ‘I’m Jim Wiseman. You scared the living shit out of me. Nice balaclava, though. Bet it comes in handy on a cold day robbing banks.’

‘Very. Should I just wait here?’

‘Yeah, I think that’s best for now. We’ll find you a room later. It’s great to have you on board, welcome to the A team!’

‘Thanks. Am I actually on board?’

‘You’re kidding, right? Hasn’t Andy told you?’

‘No, other than turn up today and not tell anyone. I sent him the rushes he wanted and hoped I did some good times the other day.’

‘That’s so typical. I think you equalled Perry’s best time on your second lap, and your best lap was over a second faster. Wilman was straight on the phone to the office and was like, “Boys, we’ve got a new Stig …”’

The Stig was the show’s faceless racing driver who tested everything from exotic supercars to family saloons around Top Gear’s track, setting fast lap times to gauge their performance. Dressed in black and hidden behind a blackout helmet, he looked like Darth Vader’s racing twin.

The vital component of The Stig’s aura was anonymity. No one ever saw his face, knew his name or heard him speak. When Perry McCarthy, the chattiest racing driver on the planet, revealed that he was the driver behind the mask after Series 2, his days were numbered. Shortly after I took over, I observed the fate awaiting me if I ever broke that rule.

Black Stig, or rather someone dressed like him, was filmed being strapped into a Jaguar XJS to attempt a speed record aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Invincible. A dummy Stig was then sent screaming down the launch pad, aided by the pressurised steam catapult used for launching Sea Harriers.

Stig ‘missed his braking point’. Car and driver crashed into the North Sea, never to be seen again …

With him out of the way, it was my turn in the sandpit. But I knew that a character born of the media would inevitably die by it; that a single slip-up would lead to the catapult. Black Stig lasted a year on the show; maybe I could hold out for two. Carpe Diem. If it only lasted a day, I was determined to make it a good one.

I vowed to take The Stig in the White Suit to a new level of secrecy and hold out for as long as possible. I made my own rules: never park in the same place twice, never talk to anyone outside the ‘circle’ and keep a balaclava on until I was eight miles clear of the location, and certain that no one was following.

My golden rule was never to appear in the white suit without my helmet on. Conjecture was nothing without proof, and nothing short of photographic, tangible evidence could prove who I was. I sterilised my gear, left every trace of Ben Collins – my phone, my wallet and so on – locked in the car, then hid the keys. When the Sunday Times raided my changing room and sifted through my gear, the only information they gleaned was that The Stig wore size 10 shoes.

At work I hid behind a mask. At home I lied to everyone, including my friends and family, about what I was doing.

To me, The Stig epitomised the ultimate quest: no challenge too great, no speed too fast. He had to look cool and have attitude, so I ditched the crappy racing overalls the BBC gave me and acquired some Alpinestars gear and a Simpson helmet.

Apart from unparalleled skill behind the wheel, The Stig was rumoured to have paranormal abilities and webbed buttocks, to urinate petrol and be top of the CIA’s Most Wanted list. There was only one possible hitch: I had never been a tame racing driver.

* * *

After forty minutes the balaclava began to itch like hell. The only place to give my head a break was the mothballed room Jim Wiseman had shown me where the test pilots used to change for pre-flight. It was more like a jail cell.

Paint flaked off the damp, yellow-stained walls; the red-painted concrete floor had survived an earthquake and the windows were too high to see out of. It was furnished minimally – with a rump-numbing, standard locker-room issue wooden bench. My only company was a plump beetle that I named Reg. He usually made an appearance mid-morning and scrambled across the pock-marked floor.

I waited there for hours on end, to be summoned to go ballistic on the track in whatever vehicle was lined up for filming. Food was brought to me and eaten in solitary confinement. In between eating and driving, two of my favourite pursuits, I busied myself reading books or doing press-ups. I pestered racing teams on the phone and drifted off into the recesses of my brain. It was like The Shawshank Redemption, minus the shower scene.

Only Andy Wilman, Wiseman and a couple of the producers knew who I was. I was just a voice behind a mask. Even the presenters were in the dark. When I coached the celebrity guests, none of them knew my name. They never saw my face. My helmet always stayed on with the visor shut.

It didn’t take long to slip into my new routine.

It would begin with a knock at the door. The world turned Polaroid as I pulled on my helmet. The familiar scent of its resin bond filled my nostrils and the wadding pressed against my cheeks. I paced down the hall and on to the airfield to receive instructions from the director. People stopped in their tracks and stared at me like I was E.T.

The director swept his curly locks behind his ears and extended his hands, framing a square with his thumbs and forefingers as he breathlessly visualised the scene he was looking for.

‘What we would like you to do, if you can, Stig, is pull away really fast. And spin the wheels. Can you do that?’

The cameraman, a North Face advocate with white blond hair, crouched like a rabbit six inches from a Porsche 911’s rear wheel, evidently focused on the hub. ‘Hi, I’m Ben Joiner,’ he said. ‘Am I all right here?’

I nodded. I was hardly being asked to skim the barriers at Daytona.

I red-lined the Porker, flipped the clutch and vanished in a haze of smoke.

The radio crackled. ‘Cut, cut, cut … Wonderful. Let’s do that again, but this time look at the camera first and then go!’

We did it again. And again. And again. Filming took … time.

I began to get my head around the compromise between fast driving and spectacular driving for TV. Sometimes it overlapped – a fast lap could be as exciting to behold on the screen as on the stopwatch, but that was rare.

I studied the edit inside a minivan with James, a dour young Brummie who received the footage hot from the track, tapped a whirlwind of inputs on to his hieroglyphic keyboard, and deftly dissected it into a meaningful sequence for broadcast.

To enhance the viewing experience – and to keep my new friend James at bay – I threw in some wheelspins and lashings of lurid cornering to complement the more sedate looking but faster driving shots.

The Porsche was down to set a time, but it was pissing with rain and the track was flooding in the straights. Just completing a 140mph lap without spinning on to the turf had been an accomplishment.

Andy Wilman wandered down and collared me. ‘Can’t you do something?’

‘What did you have in mind? A good time is out of the question. The car aquaplanes from second right up to fifth on the straights.’

‘The old Black Stig was a dab hand round this place, y’know. Amazing car control in the wet. Just do something. Something … interesting.’

Andy could already push my buttons like a jukebox.

As if by magic, the eight-year-old in my brain had a great idea. The Follow Through corner was named when Andy designed the layout of the Top Gear track with Lotus test driver Gavan Kershaw from Naaaarwich (which some people know as Norwich). ‘The cars will be going bloody fast through this bit,’ Gavan explained. ‘You wouldn’t want to go off, that’s for sure.’

Andy is rumoured to have got quite excited at that point. ‘You mean if you went off you’d shit yourself and follow through?’

I asked Jim Wiseman to reposition the Follow Through cameraman. I’d decided not to share my plan with him. If things went wrong, I could always blame the weather.

I pounded the Porker around the lap as per normal. As I exited the Hammerhead chicane the adrenalin began boosting. As every gear-change propelled me closer to the money shot, I started to wonder if this was such a good idea.

The rain slashed across the windscreen, I turned right into the Follow Through and buried the throttle. The Porker fired several warning signals but I was able to straighten up and point it towards the gap between the tyre wall and the verge. The pools of water were so dense they were picking the whole car up and aiming it in a load of different directions. For my plan to work, that was precisely what I needed.

Forty feet to go.

I passed my previous braking point and kept it lit, steered straight, leant left and handed over control to the Rain God.

The water lifted all four tyres off the tarmac and the steering went ghostly light. I passed through the tyre wall at a rude angle at just under 120mph. There wasn’t a sound as the car pinged into its first 360-degree spin.

I stayed on my original line of travel, which was good news. It gave me 300 feet of runway to sort things out before I ran into the landing lights. To cap this manoeuvre in style I needed to end up facing in the right direction.

Once I was going fully backwards on the second gyration, I straightened the steering, then turned it gently right to swing the front around. I was still shipping at around 100, so I had to manhandle out of the manoeuvre with some hard opposite lock to catch the rear for the last time.

Gotcha.

I skirted the gutter bordering the runway and peddled round the final corners to cross the finish.

I pulled alongside Jim for a debrief.

‘Fucking hell. Are you all right?’

‘Sure. How did it look?’

Jim rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t know if it’s better or worse that you did that intentionally …’ He contacted the main camera unit on his radio. ‘Biff, did you get that?’

‘Uuh … Oh … Yeah … We got it.’ ‘Iain, what about you?’

‘YYYAAAAAAAAAP (enormous burp). Got it.’

‘What’ve you got, Jim?’ Andy quizzed.

‘The mother of all spins. Stiggy’s changing his underpants as we speak. So am I, for that matter.’

‘Good work. Get ready for the celeb, he’ll be here in fifteen.’

With that, a black van was dispatched to collect the camera tapes and run them across to James. I went off to get some lunch.

The Top Gear catering unit consisted of a double-decker bus and mobile trailer. When the schedule was tight I grabbed my own scoff. Each chef greeted me with the same startled look as I bowled up like a white-suited Oliver Twist. They checked my wristband periodically to ensure I had a meal ticket. Can’t be too careful.

‘How do you eat it?’ the chef asked.

‘I snort it through a straw. What’s for pudding?’

‘Something squidgy.’

Depending on the guest, I might get a briefing beforehand. With my limited knowledge of TV personalities I needed all the help I could get.

Wilman took me under his wing and talked me through it. ‘Right, Stiggy. Today we’ve got Martin Kemp driving the reasonably priced car.’

‘OK.’

‘Do you watch EastEnders?’

‘I’ve seen it, yes. Is he the bald one?’

Andy shot a bemused look towards the heavens. ‘No. He’s the baddie. Everyone hates him; well, not the public but in the show. He used to be in Spandau Ballet. Can you teach him some good moves out there so he sets a fast time?’

‘Absolutely, assuming it dries.’

It didn’t. The track stayed as slick as Kemp’s hairdo and he spun so far off the track during practice that he nearly collected a $6m helicopter.

I handed Martin over to the presenters, who went about filming their pieces with him in front of the studio audience. My job was done, yet the night was still young. I never hung around after studio days for a beer or a chat. It was decidedly antisocial of me, but I really did have somewhere else to be.

Chapter 8

Green Fatigue

We gathered around the Directing Staff Instructor, a decorated NCO who bore the angry scar of a shrapnel wound in his neck, a legacy of the Balkans conflict. Plissken was a stocky northerner whose boyish looks belied his frontline experience, and he spoke on rapid fire.

The reasons for us being there were many, though none good enough at this stage to merit more than veiled contempt from the real Men in Green. The Army Reserves may have been part time, but the Airborne ethos was all-consuming.

In modern times British airborne forces have become renowned for rapid insertion into theatres of operation around the globe, after fifty years of successful deployment in everything from jungle warfare and counter terrorism to the deserts of the Middle East. A free-thinking force with a will to overcome any obstruction.

Recruits had to develop the mental and physical resilience to cope with the most challenging scenarios. By the time we were ‘wasting’ Plissken’s oxygen, swingeing physical tests had halved our number. The course itself took place mainly in Wales and involved arduous uphill work in the Brecon Beacons, a stunning range of heather-clad peaks notorious for their inclement and unpredictable weather. As primarily weekend warriors, it took the best part of a year before we were deemed worthy of further training.

Passing required a high level of navigational skill and physical stamina. The chances of making it through were one in twenty, which cheered me no end. They were considerably more favourable than the odds of becoming an F1 driver, and no one asked you to hand over £1.5 million for the privilege.

Slick weapon handling drills were critical to staying on the course. We disassembled, re-assembled, loaded, made ready and constantly karate chopped the sliding bolt action of the SA80 assault rifle, aka the ‘piece of shite’. Safe handling and consummate knowledge of every component of the weapon system was vital. With our woollen hats pulled down over our eyes, we learnt to strip it blindfolded.

‘We’re not here to fail you lads. We’re here to teach you to survive. I don’t give two shits whether any of you make it or not. Quite honestly we don’t need a single fucking one of you. If you want to be here, that’s down to you.’ Plissken paused to let his message sink in. ‘Jones, where’s your head cover?’

‘I left it in the block, Staff.’

‘Fucking spastic. Use my one.’

‘You!’ A boot thumped my own. ‘What size rag do you use to clean this weapon?’

‘Forty-five by forty-five, Staff,’ I answered.

‘Correct. Forty fucking five by forty fucking five, and if any of you dick-heads try and shove anything else down the barrel you’ll be paying for it with the armourer.’

His footsteps receded. I slipped the bolt carrier assembly back inside my rifle and fumbled for the recoil rod. A twanging spring suggested a fellow recruit had just got that part badly wrong.

‘Lord Jesus Christ, what ’ave you done?’ Plissken moaned.

‘Sorry, Staff …’

‘You will be, son. Start with fifty press-ups, the lot of ya.’

Men had died on the Welsh mountains while undertaking arduous recruit training. Training was relentless, punctuated by intermittent, brutal exercise called ‘fizz’ – sprint here, carry a man there – reducing us to gasping wretches within seconds. Lessons were never repeated. You learnt them or you failed.

Between work commitments I exercised every day in every way. Every escalator became a step machine, every run a beasting. I swam, surfed, cycled and climbed at ten tenths.

I was training in Snowdonia when my phone rang. It was the best kind of blast from the past. I told Georgie I was living in London but currently training in Snowdonia. Yes, I’d love to see her. Next week would be fantastic … I had goose bumps, and for once they had nothing to do with the harsh weather. I practically sprinted across the hillside.

The next few days took years. I wondered how much she’d have changed, and how much I had. It had been ten years.

We met in a dimly lit restaurant in town, and after the molasses had melted in my mouth it was just like old times. Her smile was as intoxicating as ever and for two hours nothing else in the world mattered. The difference this time round was I realised how much more interested I was in her life, her choices, her hopes. She had travelled the world, excelled in every kind of water sport and remained passionate about art. Work came second. And me? I suddenly realised I’d developed a potentially terminal case of tunnel vision – but, thankfully, she was still patient, and the wine was strong.

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