The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (3 page)

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 real y cool. Dad was going to kil me. But my addiction to speed was al 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 normal y took the shape of a Lotus F1-styled pedal kart. It took me eighteen years to realise the connection.

The thril of driving and risk taking had been instil ed in me from an early age. No two journeys in my dad’s car were ever the same, but they general y 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 al 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 stil , 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 yel ow 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 actual y attending. Sporting the cap from one school and a blazer and tie from two others, his first days at col ege 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 fril y 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 al 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 al 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, bul ets from a low-flying aircraft strafed the garden wal s 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 final y 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 al owed 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 yel ow 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 wel 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 ful of smal talk and grown-ups I decided to break free of my shyness and act on a judgement cal .

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 smal boy was ideal y 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 bel on his High Striker. The second pain-wave swept across him, tears wel ed in his eyes and he dropped to his knees, straining to get his breath back. Something about the bel -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 instil ed in me by my parents; I just added my own interpretation. Dad deserved that car and the boss was a trol 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 bal s.

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, fel as, 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 Col ins 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 pul ed 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 stil 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 al your races,’ she told me. To my astonishment, I did. Winning felt good; it gave me a sense of purpose.

The Ojai Val ey swim team punched wel 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 al 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 chal enging, sliding your arms in a control ed arc around your body to propel yourself through the water. Mastery over breathing was essential and it developed the cardio-vascular system. The control ed 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 windmil .

The explosive nature of the races was al -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 excel ence. 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.

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.