The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [151]
The Audi R8 with its 5.2 litre V10 detonator was 100 horsepower shy of the Corvette, and the Dunsfold stopwatch was pitiless when it came to grunt. The R8 relied on balanced handling to account for the shortfall and its best time came in a full second behind the Vette.
With its squat profile and sunken shoulders, the Audi looked like the Veyron’s baby brother – a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Dropping a V10 into it was a stroke of genius. So was giving it a four-wheel drive system with a predominantly rear-driven bias, allowing you to corner on rails or wave the tail at will. The R8 was poised and precise. The small but perfectly formed rear wing did little to conceal its front-loaded bias when you steered in, which got the juices flowing. It pitched in and you had to hang on, especially under heavy braking.
On my second timed run it bit me as I slowed for Turn One and went skidding sideways down past Iain’s camera at 90mph. The lap was wasted as far as posting a time was concerned, so I dropped down a gear and torched the throttle. The R8 followed a predictable line for 300 metres with smoke pouring off all four tyres. That’s what I called handling.
After a day like that, I needed no reminding of how fortunate I was. To really enjoy your job is a most desirable position to be in.
But the urge to race was nagging at my soul. I needed my sense of purpose to be defined by the outcome of ruthless competition. I wanted to be the author of the events shaping my life, and to do that I needed my own identity back. The words of the Blackpool palm reader echoed hauntingly in my mind: choose one path over the other. I set about getting my face in front of teams in earnest and reacquainted myself with the dark art of the cold call.
I envied The Stig. He was as welcome at A-list parties as he was on the grid of the Indy 500, NASCAR and even Le Mans. With the helmet off I knew I’d have to adjust to the kind of reception Clark Kent got when he put away the cape. But to my astonishment I found that with my feet firmly back on the ground, life as Ben Collins looked a lot more interesting than I’d ever imagined.
Out of the blue, I was contacted by my old team from Rockingham, Ray Mallock’s, and given the opportunity to race their car in the European Le Mans Series. I flew out to Portugal to meet both the team and the machine.
The Lola Honda Prototype, with its closed cockpit, giant fins and fat slick tyres, looked more like an F-16 fighter jet than a car.
The high revving engine whizzed over the bumpy circuit and blind flowing crests. The downforce sucked me into the tarmac as I took the corners at three times the weight of gravity. The view ahead played on fast forward, the competition was up close and personal and the impatient racing driver was home again.
RML proved why they were leading the championship by running a faultless operation all weekend. I ran the final stints into the night and took the chequered flag, barely visible through the glare of the rubber-blasted windscreen. We won the race.
Epilogue
Outside my little white bubble, the horizon in fact stretched away towards infinity. Replacing the constant fear that my world could unravel in the press at any moment with a ticket to ride through free space began to make sense. No more what ifs; more what’s next? The world is filled with extraordinary people making things happen every day. Bigger car chases and faster races. It was a cracking final series. Thanks to the magic of Harry Potter’s best friend Ron Weasley, aka Rupert Grint, we put a new star at the top of the board in the latest incarnation of the reasonably priced car – the Kia C’eed. Rupert slammed around the newly-surfaced Dunsfold circuit in