The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [28]
We were bearing down on a pair of GTs running line astern. I had a good slingshot from their slipstream, moved one lane higher towards the wall and overtook. The prototype didn’t see me coming and swung out with me alongside.
The banking was beginning to flatten out for the straight, so this was not a good time to change direction. The only space left for me on the track was the high side, which was covered in sand and marbles, so that’s where I went. The steering instantly went light as the slick tyres lost contact with asphalt, scrabbled with the dirt and pointed me at the wall. A microsecond later, the rear lost traction. As the camber fell away I had to get out of the throttle and tap some brake to nudge the front away from the wall.
I passed the prototype with a front wheel locked, pitched sideways so close to the wall I thought it would shave the rear wing endplate. It may have looked ugly but I made it stick.
I cruised the pit lane later to find the guy I overtook and maybe share a laugh. There he was, overalls tied at the waist, wearing a baseball cap with big aviator shades drooping off the end of his nose. His neck was frail for a racing driver, but not for a 77-year-old. His voice sounded familiar as he chatted to his mechanic, then Butch Cassidy’s clear blue eyes saw me coming. I froze. Paul Newman, star of the silver screen for more than half a century, racer of old and charitable angel who parachuted millions of dollars into worthy causes, was the coolest dude I ever saw. And that’s exactly how I left him. He had enough people bothering him for a piece of his time.
Werner was on spectacular form and stuck the Ascari Judd on pole position. He spent the afternoon flexing his muscles under the Florida sunshine and cooking the ‘brai’ so that ‘none of you Engleesh burn my meat’.
My duty at Daytona was to develop an experimental turbo-charged engine in the sister Ascari. The words ‘experimental’ and ‘endurance’ made poor bedfellows. Not only was the engine gutless and expensive, but parts of the rear wing kept falling off.
During the race I had to watch my mirrors to keep an eye on things. After the third pit stop to repair the wing we realised that the entire wing post was being shaken loose by the deafening harmonics of the engine. It was deemed too dangerous to continue, so that was the end of that. Maybe one day we would finish an enduro event.
The twelve-hour race at Sebring was half the duration of Daytona 24 but twice as exhausting. Mars had a more temperate climate than Florida in March. And the Martians themselves were pretty conservative by comparison to the 150,000 fans who camped at the track during America’s spring break. The usual petrolheads were joined by tens of thousands of college kids who partied hard. The police brought an armoured tank to keep them under control.
Swarms of them descended from the nearby beaches for a look at some fast noisy things. Tanned babes in scant bikinis toting dollar fifty plastic necklaces exchanged them at every opportunity for bodily fluids or a flash of flesh. The race fans built their own bars, converted school buses into multi-storey viewing galleries and invented my favourite gadget of all time. A 200 horsepower engine beneath the cushions enabled the devoted fan to admire the racing from the comfort of his own motorised sofa from a variety of vantage points around the infield.
The heat built up to 90 degrees with 100 per cent humidity. All the effort of physical training was worth every bead of sweat when you set about the track. It was as rough as hell. The surface was a bumpy patchwork of different materials and there were some fast, challenging corners with minimal run-off. You had to chase the heavy steering for every second