The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me by Ben Collins Page B
Authors: Ben Collins
Tags: General, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Performing Arts, Sports & Recreation, Sports, Television, Transportation, motor sports, Automotive
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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 hel . The only place to give my head a break was the mothbal ed room Jim Wiseman had shown me where the test pilots used to change for pre-flight. It was more like a jail cel .
Paint flaked off the damp, yel ow-stained wal s; the red-painted concrete floor had survived an earthquake and the windows were too high to see out of. It was furnished minimal y – with a rump-numbing, standard locker-room issue wooden bench. My only company was a plump beetle that I named Reg. He usual y made an appearance mid-morning and scrambled across the pockmarked floor.
I waited there for hours on end, to be summoned to go bal istic 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 pul ed on my helmet. The familiar scent of its resin bond fil ed my nostrils and the wadding pressed against my cheeks. I paced down the hal 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 pul away real y 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 al 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 col ared 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
After forty minutes the balaclava began to itch like hel . The only place to give my head a break was the mothbal ed room Jim Wiseman had shown me where the test pilots used to change for pre-flight. It was more like a jail cel .
Paint flaked off the damp, yel ow-stained wal s; the red-painted concrete floor had survived an earthquake and the windows were too high to see out of. It was furnished minimal y – with a rump-numbing, standard locker-room issue wooden bench. My only company was a plump beetle that I named Reg. He usual y made an appearance mid-morning and scrambled across the pockmarked floor.
I waited there for hours on end, to be summoned to go bal istic 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 pul ed on my helmet. The familiar scent of its resin bond fil ed my nostrils and the wadding pressed against my cheeks. I paced down the hal 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 pul away real y 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 al 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 col ared 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
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