The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [150]
I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way when Red Bull needed someone to run their F1 car at Silverstone. It was due for a coat of ‘glow-in-the-dark’ paint, so it could feature in TG’s art exhibition.
‘Vettel and Webber are busy,’ Alex said. ‘But they say they’d let Ben Collins have a go. Looks like you’ve picked up a fine ride, Mr C.’
I put down the phone and punched the air. About ten times. The F1 run at Silverstone clashed with the studio record several hundred miles away in Guildford, but I assured the producers I could make it.
I arrived at Silverstone the following morning. The air was crisp, with no cloud and a strong wind, and there was the big blue articulated transporter with the shiny blue, red and yellow missile parked in front of it. An F1 car never looked so beautiful as the day you drove one.
Red Bull’s test team, all neatly decked out like walking energy cans, were busy running systems checks. I squeezed inside their beautiful machine and tried to treat it the same as any other racing tool.
‘You might need this.’ Team Manager Tony Burrows handed me the F1 equivalent of a windscreen wiper: a white rag. ‘Coulthard said he couldn’t see a thing through the paint once he was in fourth gear!’
Tony took a step back whilst one of the young Herberts sprayed the surface of the car with a fresh dollop of glow paint.
They threw every thermal blanket they had at the engine and gearbox to generate enough core temperature in the highly stressed systems. A hand reached into the cockpit and switched the ignition to position one. The engineer put revolutions through the motor, ‘bumping’, using a remote toggle. Once in ignition two, the beast awoke. The engineer blipped the throttle from his control panel.
Once the heated tyres had been chucked on I held in the paddle clutch, made plenty of noise with the gas and turned out onto the track.
I was used to F1 power from my old Le Mans racer and I’d tested a few older F1 models in the past, but nothing compared to the tautness of a ‘current’ machine. I squeezed the throttle and it settled into the tarmac. Enough squeezing; I dumped it. The engine howled. I flicked the gear paddle. My neck took the strain and sure enough, as soon as I reached fourth at 150mph, the gloopy paint spread across the bodywork and lashed across my visor. Momentarily blinded, I backed off a touch, wiped the fromage from my visor and blasted towards the Becketts complex.
From then on I kept my foot buried and wiped away wave after wave of the stuff as the car’s vortex spun it in all directions. A few drops of rain made the whole process all the more interesting, with the car squirming and spinning its wheels out of the turns in third gear.
The job was done by 10.45am. I thanked Tony and his crew and hauled ass down to Dunsfold to jump into the new Corvette ZR1 and the V10 powered Audi R8.
I loved Corvettes, so I expected the ZR1 to amaze. With its super-charged V8 motor pumping 638bhp through a lightened frame, it was descended from a line of pure, simple-to-drive powerhouses that were wonderfully balanced and deceptively fast. There was no mistaking its berserk level of power, but as soon as I reached a corner the rear end started to pitch, wobble and lose stability.
Corvettes ran on primitive-looking but superbly effective transverse leaf spring suspension, similar to that of a Land Rover. It resembled a stack of plywood, but meant you could buy something with Lamborghini performance for a fraction of the price.
The newer Vettes had sophisticated magnetic damping. Electric impulses changed the fluid’s viscosity, altering its performance a thousand times every second, to absorb bumps and shift its weight. This one sensed its front wheels lifting from the copious extra thrust, considered the steering angle and automatically softened the absorption