The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [50]
He got into the driver’s seat and wiggled the gearstick, which crunched in anticipation.
‘You really have to hand it to Jeremy,’ he said. ‘What a piece of shit.’
I told him to rev it to three and a half thousand and just dump the clutch. ‘Don’t slip it like you would in Sainsbury’s car park.’ As if Simon hung out at Sainsbury’s.
We sped off. After a single sighting lap, he began marrying every suggestion I made with small adjustments to his rather basic style.
Simon drove like my mum, with an upright posture and a stiff upper lip. He did shuffle the wheel through his hands to take the corners; the habit was clearly too ingrained for me to change it in the short time we had together. I focused his attention instead on taking a wide approach to the corners and gauging his speed by looking ahead.
What set him apart, made him truly sublime, was his ability to feel the level of grip the car was producing and to match that with precisely the right speed for each corner. He was a real natural.
When he cocked up, he would laugh or call himself a wanker. When the Liana pirouetted at warp 9 through clouds of dust and grass, he remained as calm as a Hindu cow and asked, ‘What happened that time?’ in a tone that was drier than Ghandi’s flip-flop.
I explained the tiny adjustments he needed to make to his line into the corners, turning in later to give the tyres less work to do on a continuous arc, where to brake less and carry extra speed.
His improvement impressed him. After a few laps he said, ‘You’re really good. Who are you?’
Coming from a talent scout with the world at his feet to someone looking for a way ahead in it, there was only one logical answer. But I didn’t give it. After nine laps of my backseat driving, I stayed silent for a lap and he didn’t make a single error. Simon was ready to go solo.
Dennis rolled the in-car cameras and Jim politely asked Simon for ‘plenty of chat’. I suggested he put in a banker lap first time round, nothing too crazy.
Every lap began from a standing start, which enabled us to chat to Simon and move cameras during the re-set. He set off to the shrill sound of spinning tyres and I followed his progress from the edge of the track.
Jim and I watched transfixed as the Liana crossed the line. Jim carefully angled his stopwatch in my direction in case any of Simon’s people were peeking. It was within a second of the lap record.
Simon pulled up, his elbow on the window ledge, and asked what gear he was supposed to use in the second corner.
‘Second.’
I asked him to brake later at the penultimate turn. The next lap was audibly faster; we could see him wrestle the steering. I got him to brake later, corner by corner, and he went faster every lap.
Simon took a cigarette and water break and asked how he was doing, but we couldn’t let him know before his interview.
His eyebrows disappeared beneath his immaculately sculpted hair-line. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’
Yes we did.
We bolted him back into the five-point harness. I always found that the most uncomfortable part of my job; I never quite got used to reaching between a celebrity crotch and yanking a strap across their balls or breasts.
As Simon put in some more fabulous laps, Wilman turned up to check on things. Jim showed him his notepad.
‘Bloody Nora.’ Wilman gave a soft-shoe shuffle. ‘Don’t tell him.’
Simon shared our enthusiasm, so we kept pushing him until he reached a plateau on around lap ten. I told him it was an excellent time that he probably wouldn’t beat.
Andy then offered him a passenger ride in the Noble M12 supercar, so I wheeled it out.
The M12 was light as a feather. Its V6 motor was powered by twin turbochargers that took time to spool up before belching the machine forward with gigantic thrust. By selecting the right gears and keeping the turbo’s pressure peaking, I could slide the car all the way up to 80mph. I was keen to register a reaction from Simon, so I gave