The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (25 page)

I pushed harder and remembered how much you had to throw a front-wheel-driven rol er pig into the corners. At the end of the straight into Bacharach I barely kissed the brakes. The tail lurched sideways and I put down 100 per cent throttle long before the corner.

I cut a hefty chunk off the inside of the bend, dropped two wheels on to the grass on the way out and carried a shedload of speed towards the final turn. I dabbed the brake in third and hurled it in, slid wide, launched into the air over the verge and crashed on to the wheel rims as I landed.

Jim wouldn’t confirm the time, but I knew I had to find more.

‘Can we switch cars? I think this one is a dog.’

‘OK, sure. Ugh, no actual y, we’ve only got one today.’

I stared at him for a moment, trying not to show my frustration. Grant was talking into the radio.

Wilman had some words of encouragement for me, so Grant pointed the speaker in my direction. ‘Tel him to think of Damon Hil ’s quali lap from the ’97 Budapest GP,’ said Wilman. ‘One mighty lap at the eleventh hour is al it takes.’ Very encouraging.

‘No worries. Let me just cool the engine and give it another go.’

I could real y taste the adrenalin now; it had taken its sweet time coming. I waited on the line and pictured the lap in my mind, without squashing the tyres under braking, letting it flow. I opened my eyes and released from the start line with no wheelspin. I braked late for the first corner and released them early. I turned and took the tighter, ‘fast in, fast out’ racing line. The front barely carried the extra speed.

I straight-lined the Fol ow Through with minimal steering to scrub as little speed as possible. I nearly lost it into Bacharach but it came good, howled through there, turned into the final corner and flew across the line with both wheels in the gul y. I had no more.

Jim was nodding as I drove by and his lips read, ‘Yeah, baby.’ Stiggy stil had it. A few hours later I sat on the sofa to have Jeremy deliver my lap time. He usual y tortured his guests by reading it one number at a time. The Stig didn’t stand for that kind of nonsense and would never have waited for applause. As Jeremy started tel ing the audience my time, I just got up and walked out.

For once I’d caught Jeremy off guard, but he rather liked that. I’d beaten Mansel ’s time by two tenths of a second.

G
ordon Ramsay was awesome, even more intense and faster talking than on TV, so I had to shift up a gear to keep with him. He was just a big kid real y, and one of the few who swore
less
when he was driving. Only five times a lap.

He bit his lip and stuck in an aggressive but flowing circuit that put him at the top of the board. The bal s-out approach doesn’t usual y work on the reasonably priced car, but he was a natural. He was so excited that he let me blat his Ferrari around the track with his sous-chef riding alongside. He subsequently claimed that I ‘fucked his clutch’, but you know what, Gordon? I fucking didn’t.

Track conditions for the guests varied from hot to not-so-hot, from wet to mildly moist, and that was just the state of the tarmac. When Jamie Oliver came down, Brian the Studio Director took me to one side.

‘He real y wants to do wel . He’s a lovely boy; make sure he does a good time, won’t you?’

Meeting the Naked One was like catching up with an old mate from school – no airs or graces, just an easy-going dude. He was genuinely pleased to meet us al . Then he saw the track.

‘Bol ocks, what do you cal this, then?’

The whole airfield was covered by three inches of snow. That morning I’d done a power lap in the new Jaguar XKR that was ten seconds slower than normal. At one point it was so thick that when I drove across it at speed, the car was picked up and f lung ten metres in the other direction.

Gordon Ramsay had cooked up quite a masterpiece; nothing short of a clear dry run would beat his 1.46.38. But it didn’t stop Jamie trying, and as the snow melted he managed to put in a mega time, just a second slower than his arch-rival. As wet laps go it was the best and smoothest I ever saw.

You’d expect elite sportsmen to be good around the track, and that was largely the case, but the Lacetti wasn’t the chariot of choice for big units like Lawrence Dal aglio and Usain Bolt.

Rugby legend Dal aglio weighed in at just under 112kg, and Usain was about 95, nearly a tenth of the car’s kerb weight and almost two Lewis Hamiltons.

Dal aglio looked ridiculous in the Lacetti. His head was jammed on to the ceiling, his tree-trunk legs fil ed the entire footwel and his giant hands wrapped around the steering wheel like he was holding a peppermint.

He stil managed a lap that was within a second of the fastest time, a storming effort given the weight handicap. I had a go at tackling Lawrence afterwards; it went badly. He lifted me off the ground by my helmet and nearly snapped my neck.

Sprinter Usain Bolt arrived at Dunsfold having set a new world record for the 200 metres in France the night before. After the press conferences he’d gone to bed at 3am, woken up a couple of hours later and got straight on a plane.

Usain is six foot five. You got a stiff neck just looking up at him. But his lilting Jamaican accent made you want to put your feet up, mix a Bacardi and fal asleep. He seemed to be waltzing through life.

He picked up the mechanics of racing in no time and was soon flying solo. He made making an effort seem effortless. He pul ed in after setting a blistering time, wound down the window and gave me a sleepy smile. ‘Man, this is some scary stuff right here. It’s stressful out there.’

‘You don’t look massively stressed,’ I said. ‘You’re doing real y wel .’

We pul ed him out of the car for a water break and I noticed his shoelace was undone. Later on they played a clip of him winning a gold medal in the 100 metres and his laces were undone then as wel . Talk about laid back.

I made sure he tied it securely and we sent him out. You only have to get your laces wrapped around the throttle pedal once to realise it’s not a good idea.

Usain pul ed every ounce of speed out of the car and finished off with his signature pose, pointing skywards with his hands like he was firing an arrow. Had it not been for his weight I’m sure he would have edged Gordon Ramsay out of first place. That honour was claimed by Simon Cowel on his second visit. He surprised himself by topping the times and gave Clarkson a bashing in the interview as they took turns in ribbing one another.

When it came to pure passion, no one could touch the space cowboy known as Jamiroquai. ‘Jay’

was also a walking supercar encyclopaedia. He’d set the fastest time in the Suzuki on his previous visit, under the guidance of the Black Stig. I’d always felt a bit smug about tearing a second off Jay’s time with four of ‘my’ celebs.

Wherever Jay went after that, people ribbed him about his time being beaten, and now he wanted to put things right. The pressure was on, but he was stil carrying a cheeky grin. He arrived wearing some nifty Alpinestars racing boots. I could tel from his handshake that he was pumped.

‘Up for it today?’ I grinned beneath my helmet.

‘Are you kidding? This is WAR, man!’

I knew Jay was wild from a commercial I did with him for an EA Sports game cal ed
Need for Speed
.

I was dressed as a State Trooper and thrashing an Eighties Chevy police cruiser, a big mama, around a track. Jay slipped into the role of mad, ‘catch me if you can’, tearaway speed junkie with remarkable ease.

He pul ed alongside my car at 120mph in a pimped-out Nissan GTR, shot me the stiff finger, shouted ‘Fuck you, Pig,’ and roared off cackling with laughter.

As we sat in the Chevy Lacetti, I built Jay up from scratch like he’d never seen the track or driven the car before. I wanted to give him his very best shot. His lines were good, he kept it loose and he pedal ed faster lap by lap.

‘How’s he going?’ Wilman asked.

‘He’s on it. He’s just four tenths of a second short of Simon Cowel . He can probably beat it if we stick with him.’

‘OK. Keep me posted; I want fireworks out there.’

Jay was super-consistent. I tried everything to pul the extra time out of him and it must have pissed him off big time to be so close, but not quite close enough.

‘Keep pushing; you’ve got to find more in the penultimate corner.’

‘I am, man. I’m braking as fucking late as I can in this HEEEAP OF SHIIIIIT. Am I there yet, have I beaten the time, can you just tel me?’

I shook my head. ‘Al I can say is you haven’t done your best time yet. But you wil .’

‘
C’MON!
You’re fucking kidding.
Grrrrrrrr
…’ He banged his head on the steering wheel a few times and blew out a lungful of air. He was working himself up to a performance.

‘If you real y want this, the money is al in that corner over there. Brake so late that you think you’re having an accident, let go, the back end starts sliding, then bury the throttle.’

The producer raised an eyebrow. ‘Hmm, I wonder what wil happen now …’

Sure enough, Jay went flying into the weeds. I decided it was time to bring out the spare. It would give the boy a chance to draw breath and gather himself mental y.

Jay went out for two more laps. We remained stony-faced. Grant told him that he could do some more laps if he wanted but that he’d reached a plateau. It was time for the ordeal of the leather sofa. He tapped his foot like a jackhammer throughout the interview, then went stil as Jeremy started to read out the time.

As usual, he extracted every last ounce of tension from the announcement.

‘One minute …

‘Forty …

‘Five …

‘Point …

‘Eight!’

Jay had pipped Cowel by a tenth of a second. He leapt off the leather sofa and danced an emphatic jig. His passion was utterly infectious.

He expressed his gratitude in the best way he knew how – by scaring the crap out of me and his two mates in a C63 Merc. He shaved the wal at Hammerhead, drifting the car wide through the corner, and I couldn’t wait to get my own back. We swapped seats and I returned the favour. He chanted ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard …’ throughout the process. I took it as a compliment.

During eight years of racing around the
Top Gear
circuit, my glittering array of celebrity drivers had to put up with muffled rantings from behind the helmet of their white-clad passenger. There was the odd exception, however, who needed to hear my every word.

I was in plain clothes when I met Wilman in the OB truck, but he stil hailed me as per normal.

‘Stig … We want to do a lap with a blind guy. Do you reckon he can do it?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Um … I don’t see why not, if he can hear what I’m saying. Can I sit next to him?’

‘Of course. But we don’t just want him to crawl around out there. It needs to be a proper lap. I mean we want him to do a time, like close to Richard Whiteley or something.’ My most chal enging pupil yet was the kind of gentle soul who might run a local toy store. He had a regular, sighted driving partner with whom he’d developed his own arcane communications system. At first, they didn’t even want me in the car with them. Listening to them discussing the track and how they’d indicate the required speeds and directions made me feel like an amateur. It was so precisely coded that I couldn’t wait to see them in action.

I insisted on at least demonstrating which way the track went, so that the sighted man could take in the layout of the circuit and the blind driver could listen in. I promised to shut up the rest of the time and just observe.

So far, so good …

After a couple of laps I banged in a fast one, fast enough for them to agree I should stay in and keep talking. We swapped seats. The blind man slid behind the wheel with me alongside and his partner in the back.

At that moment Dunsfold looked a lot more twisty than usual and the old Suzuki Liana felt faster too.

There were tyre wal s, trees and concrete outbuildings that had never concerned me before. I took a reality check. If things went seriously wrong, there was only so much I could do from the passenger seat by grabbing the wheel and yanking the handbrake to spin us to a stop, but even that was not as easy as it sounded. Driving fast made some people nervous, and I imagined blind people would be no exception. I’d instructed 90-year-old ladies who, when I made the slightest correction to the steering, resisted with the strength of Schwarzenegger ripping the pin out of another grenade.

To start us off I indicated speed and distance along a quarter-mile straight. I told them I’d indicate direction changes, raise my voice to suggest an increase in the rate of turn, fol ow any adjustment with

‘Come straight.’ ‘STOP!’ meant just that: slam the brakes and put the clutch in. That was real y important.

We pul ed away in first gear and veered off to the left. Neither my directional instructions nor the mystical smoke signals coming from his partner in the back seat could keep us off the lawn. I rol ed with it for a while, but after twenty seconds of mowing I’d had enough and cal ed for a re-set.

Off we went again. This time when we veered left, shouting ‘RIGHT’ loudly had a limited effect. We pinbal ed along the verge for a bit, then triumphantly approached the first corner. The painted lines that defined the track seemed superfluous, but I tried to keep him within them. We flowed off course, back on to the grass. The driver sensed the rough and began panting as I urged him to ease off the gas. He braked instead and we spun.

Trying to explain how to navigate the turns of a fluid race track to a blind man was mind-boggling. I never felt confident of even reaching a corner, let alone driving through one. Adding speed only compounded the problem of direction, because a duff steer for more than a second put us straight into the undergrowth.

A single corner required at least twenty instructions on the steering alone. Sudden corrections of the wheel rocked the suspension and made the front wheels skid; the driver panicked and hit the brakes. We never went faster than 20mph. After a few hours I sensed the driver was overwhelmed, so I threw in the towel.