The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (42 page)

This held his attention for, oh, almost a lap. Then he started talking.

‘You turn in
far
too early there,’ into the tight left at Brooklands. ‘Why are you steering so much into that corner?’ at super fast Copse. ‘I don’t use that line there,’ through the quick left right at Becketts. Like an Olympic fencer he timed his quips exquisitely to parry my every instruction, preventing me from actual y teaching him anything. Jeremy loved being told what to do the way cats love swimming.

I headed back to the pits and put Mr Smarty Pants in the driver’s seat.

Whirrrrrrrrrr, went the chair.

We had our first argument before leaving the pit.

‘Slow down for that hidden entrance in case a car comes out.’

He wobbled his noggin at me. ‘I think you’l find I can make it out of the pits.’

Cantankerous old bugger. I tried not to smile but I couldn’t help it. Jeremy was one of those rare people that never came unstuck, even when he was out of his depth. He had the luck of the devil.

Off we went, Clarkson style. He didn’t hang around, but this was no pro. We moved from one corner to the next without sparing the horses. Jezza adopted a stiff upper lip and a straight arm as he pointed the car into Stowe corner, too early for my liking. Then we disagreed on the line for Vale.

‘See, you slid wide because you turned in early.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘
Yes, you did
. OK,’ I pointed through the long fast right in case we ran wide into the gravel trap,

‘watch it on the power here and let it run out gradual y.’

‘
Yes, yes, yes
…
’

‘Bridge Corner will be flat once you’re comfortable. The trick is to make it back to the right side before you turn left, so
slow down a bit.
’

He disobeyed, stayed left and we ran some gravel on the way out. ‘Hmm, tyres aren’t up to temperature …’, he muttered, mistaking our road car for a McLaren.

I was determined to teach him a safe route if nothing else, and not to repeat his legendary North Pole experience. A former sergeant from the SBS gave Jeremy a lesson on dispatching polar bears with a shotgun. He’d kicked down more doors with that particular weapon than Jezza had eaten hot breakfasts. But that didn’t stop Jeremy tel ing the sergeant he was wrong, and taking over the lesson. They pushed Jeremy into a frozen lake later that week, but I’m sure there was no connection.

Jeremy took his late line into Brooklands.

‘You won’t even make the corner like that when you brake later.’

‘Mmmm …’ Deep concentration.

In his own way, Jeremy was doing wel . Al his experience of playing on circuits and airfields was paying dividends, until a sudden change of direction at Maggots sent us sideways. Instructor mode kicked in and I grabbed the steering off him, reduced our rate of turn and made horse-whispering sounds.

‘Pah,’ Clarkson spat, shrugging off my help. ‘
This
is what we do.’

Maybe I was being a sissy. The car rudely snapped one way then the other, but he kept a grip of it and made the next corner with some determined car control. I cried with laughter at his obstinacy, mostly because I saw through it. Deep down, Jeremy was a sensitive soul. Real y.

I force-fed him some instruction he did his best to ignore. He started braking very late for Stowe at 100mph and I needed his ful attention fol owing a disagreement on the straight. I wagged a finger at him.

‘Stop talking
, stop talking
, get ready, BRAKE, and … off and
turn
.’ Jeremy dragged the Lexus through by the bit.

He reluctantly tried my early line at Brooklands. ‘You might be right about that one …’ Bloody hel , progress.

I dropped Jeremy at the racing school, into the hands of the very instructors who first taught me over a decade earlier. Nothing had changed: the same short-sleeve sun-tans, Ray Bans and one-liners.

‘What’s he like?’ asked Steve Warburton, twice the size of when I first met him, but no slower.

‘Difficult.’

‘Oh, we like those. Makes the smel of fear so much sweeter.’

James May joined us, dressed in a brown leather Belstaff jacket. Flight Lieutenant May did indeed look like the right stuff, rosy-cheeked and ready for action. ‘Morning, Squadron Leader, May reporting for duty.’

‘These guys wil show you the ropes, Jimbo. Don’t be shy of pushing it so you can figure out the braking points around here.’

‘Steely-eyed speed warriors, aye. Right-oh, let the learning commence.’

I left them al standing outside the classroom puffing away at their cigarettes. Once they passed their race licences we could go and try out the BMW.

Hammond was busy filming elsewhere. The first time he would drive the track or car would be during qualifying.

Come the race weekend, maintaining my anonymity became tricky. I had to sign on official y for the race and my pseudonym didn’t cut the mustard. The organisers needed to know who was behind the helmet, and that he held a racing licence. I signed on to a separate driver sheet and made sure that I never appeared in person again for the rest of the weekend.

Jeremy had been practising in the BMW for a day before the other two turned up for the race. I stood in front of a large map of the circuit ready to explain gears, speeds and racing lines, but obviously couldn’t have managed without Jeremy’s help.

He soon lumbered towards me. ‘Right, I turn in here at Copse in third gear, but I think it could be fourth …’ and so on.

We’d be racing alongside GT2 spec machines capable of 200mph to our 120. My main concern was that if the presenters spun in front of a field of mixed-ability drivers, they could be hurt. I pinpointed the key areas on the track where they should expect faster traffic and explained where to overtake and where the loonies would try to outbrake them. Just crossing the straights in order to line up for the next corner was a major undertaking in a crowded race and it was easy to get turned around.

I turned my attention to our wheels. BBC guidelines prohibited us from having official sponsors, so we made some up.
Larsen’s Biscuits
and
Peniston Oils
logos were emblazoned across the side of the car.

Coincidental y, when the door opened during driver changes, they shortened to ‘Arse’ and ‘Penis’.

Euphoria Racing had prepared the car, led by engineer Steve Howard. Steve was forever coated in stubble, engine oil and fag ash, and kept his butt crack on display at al times. He and his crew, whom we nicknamed NASA, were absolutely tireless.

Steve swept away his scraggly blond hair and offered me a seat aboard his baby. The racing seat was protected by a tube rol cage, and was bolted into the bare metal floor. Al semblance of road car finery was in the skip, bar the stereo.

It was clearly The Stig’s responsibility to post the fastest time in qualifying to position us as high up the sixty-strong grid as possible. We put the presenters out first to ensure they completed their minimum requirement of three laps. James forgot how many laps he’d done and had to make a second run, leaving me to carry the can at the end of the session.

I hopped in and got straight on it. The BMW was a wobbly old crate and the front end was numb as a brick, but she was excel ent on the brakes. The constant understeer made her a safe school pony for the presenters, but without any grunt to balance it I found the experience over-bridled.

The track was packed with cars and I lost heaps of time driving around them. There was no time to find clear position, so my fastest lap put us one place from last. Worse stil – piss-boilingly, catastrophical y bad – was that my time was only one tenth faster than Clarkson’s.

I never saw Jeremy so happy to see me. Giddy as a schoolboy, with his overal s around his waist like a pro, he declared we were evenly matched. As his driver coach it was my duty to point out that the BMW could lap several seconds faster, that I’d simply caught terrible traffic.

‘So did I. Caught traffic at Priory on my best lap,’ he countered gleeful y.

Behind the safety of my visor, I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘OK,’ I laughed. ‘Let’s see how we get on tonight.’

Night practice was another formal requirement for al drivers wishing to participate in a twenty-four-hour event. When the sun went down on the course, you lost al familiar visual references. No trees, no grass banks, no spectators, no sky. No track either; only the narrow yel ow window twenty metres ahead provided by a set of notoriously unreliable headlights. One smash over a kerb, a bump with another racer or a flying stone could easily put an eye out, and then you played a high-speed memory game. Stir in a bunch of amateur drivers with a gutful of fear, sprinkle with gravel in the braking areas from their regular mishaps and add salt and lemon to your eyebal s for the perfect
recipe du nuit
.

We al got changed in a spare blue-carpeted room inside the race control building. If only the ladies could have tuned into my view of the boys squeezing into their tight-fitting Nomex underwear. It made the
Top Gun
shower scene look like a cold bath.

May was hopping around on one leg, trying not to fal over; Jeremy’s suit was four inches too short, and Hammo was turning blonder by the second.

Hammond was rightly concerned that he barely knew the track. ‘I can’t even remember which one is Hangar straight. I go past the pits, then it’s just … a blur …’

I handed him a circuit map with the gears, so he could memorise them and talk each lap through as he went.

‘Right. What do I do if someone wants to get past, move over?’

‘No. Hold your line and sod everyone else. They wil find a way around you. Oh, and you must ditch your surfing necklace, and none of you should chew gum out there.’

‘Al right, Daaad.’

Choking on gum was an unlikely cause of death, but mentioning it put them in the right frame of mind. Racing was
real
.

The night session was a wake-up cal for them. Having fuel ed their bodies with Walkers crisps and Diet Coke, they took turns to excavate Silverstone’s gravel traps.

Jeremy’s grin became a more poker-faced affair as he climbed into the BM and ran off a few night laps. I then slipped on my helmet, black visor and al , and, much to Jezza’s amazement, knocked three seconds off our time. We were now 42nd on the grid.

Race day brought the ultimate test of endurance and mind discipline: the driver’s briefing. The only useful information I ever received in one of these marathons was in Australia for the great race at Bathurst, where they explained the warning flags for the 180mph straight: ‘A single waved yel ow flag means there is a kangaroo near the track. Two waved yel ows means he’s on the track.’

Silverstone’s Clerk of the Course read the Motor Sports Association Book of Psalms to the 200

assembled drivers. Fortunately The Stig was able to sleep through the dul moments with no one the wiser.

Whilst the cameras rol ed on the presenters sitting next to me, I stole forty winks.

Steve’s mechanics had to whip out the engine after it had crapped itself when they warmed it up that morning. The clock was ticking. If we were too late joining, we would be barred from competing at al .

Contrived TV fakery? No, it was genuine twenty-four-carat chaos.

The boys slammed home a new unit in record time. A cloud of black diesel smoke belched from the exhaust; the beast was alive and kicking. With only twenty seconds to spare, I booted it out of the garage to start the race from the pit lane exit, dead last but one.

I managed to overtake a few people but it was hardly the stuff of Stig legend, until fate stepped in.

The heavens opened. Some drivers came in for wet tyres and I smoked them by holding out on slicks. The rest of the field slowed down considerably and I carved them up like Christmas turkeys.

Truthful y, it was the first time during the whole weekend that my heart rate had risen above its nocturnal state. Driving on slicks in the wet made the BMW super-sensitive. It gripped, but would suddenly let go as though it were on ice. It was al about precision and feel; every input was critical and you drove every second of every lap, just as racing should be. My stint got us past over twenty cars and into contention for a class win.

As we settled into the night my respect for the presenters grew and grew. Sharing the changing room with them, helping them with their helmets and safety gear, I realised just how little they knew about racing, and how fearful, excited and passionate they real y were.

Jeremy was glued to the results screen the whole way through the race. James looked increasingly haggard. His eyes were puffy from sleep deprivation and his face was as white as a sheet. Their lap times went up and down like a bride’s nightie as they strained to navigate each circuit the same way twice.

Hammond got stuck into his night stint and I monitored from the pit wal , tel ing him his times and keeping him going. The human contact was vital and his pace dropped noticeably when I stopped talking.

He was taking the line I’d taught him on the Hangar straight, crossing from right to left, across the front of a car he was overtaking to line up for Stowe. A much heavier, faster GT2 Mosler sliced between them and crashed into Hammond’s left side at a good 140mph.

‘Guys, I’ve binned it,’ he said over the radio.

The impact broke the BMW’s wheels and suspension, crumpled the bodywork and kil ed the engine.

It was the last thing any of us wanted to see happen to Hammond.

He stayed in the car as they dragged it back to our pit and was understandably shaken, so the cameras laid off him. Typical y, Hammo’s primary concern was for the car that had hit him. I soon put him right on that.

Steve’s merry crew swivelled their basebal caps and tucked in. Nearly three hours later I went out and drove pretty much al through the night. I kept awake by chatting to Steve and getting him to wind up Jeremy by saying that I’d pissed in the seat. Hours felt like days.

The field was too strung out to pass anyone until another gift landed in my lap. Fog descended over the circuit, and soon it was like swimming through pea soup. Visibility was zero and it was easy to drive off on the straights, which seemed longer as you counted the seconds until the corners.