The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [84]
The crusty surface of Rogers Lake was cracked into plates of dried mud as far as the eye could see. It was like the surface of another planet. The setting was too stunning to resist, despite the fact that we were within a restricted area.
‘Guys, we really shouldn’t be here,’ pleaded our American fixer. ‘The military don’t have a sense of humour about this kinda thing …’ He was a gentle man, mid-forties, with a career in soap operas and a closet full of Hawaiian shirts. His protests fell on deaf ears.
I slipped into character and marched out on to the very lakebed where, according to respected astronaut Gordon Cooper of NASA’s Mercury Program, an alien UFO had been filmed landing by a military research team under his command in 1957. The footage he reviewed from their cinetheodolite cameras depicted a silent saucer-shaped craft which, when approached, ‘took off at a great rate of speed’.
I slid my radio into my pocket and walked 300 metres, a satisfying crunch of mud flakes underfoot, then turned and headed back through the heat haze towards the camera. It was our homage to legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager, who first broke the sound barrier at Edwards aboard the X-1. There were no little green men running around, but I couldn’t quite shake off the eerie feeling that we were being watched.
As I reached our crew, a cluster of big 4x4s with blacked-out windows swung to a halt alongside us. The guys jumping out weren’t local rent-acops with lazy hip holsters and beer guts. These dudes were wearing assault vests and black berets, shouldering M4 carbines – with rounds in the chamber, judging by the way one of them was checking the breech.
To a casual observer the soldiers spilled randomly from their vehicles. In fact their patrol sergeant, a black bruiser with sharp sideburns and wrap-around shades, covered us vehicle by vehicle. Two emphatic fingers sent two men running towards our lead Ford Galaxy; another two cut off the rear.
I walked as casually as possible off the lakebed and joined the group where our American fixer was trying to pick up the pieces. There was plenty of ‘yes sir, no sir, three bags full’. It was hard to hear much inside the helmet, but judging by the body language it seemed best that everyone did exactly what they were told. I took a seat on the tailgate of our Suburban and marvelled at the process whereby this quick reaction force assessed the situation. There was no Top Gear on US TV at this point, so it took a little longer to explain that the guy in the spacesuit and helmet wasn’t a Korean fighter pilot trying to steal one of their latest aircraft.
Iain May leaned over and whispered, ‘Looks like you might be spending the night with these guys. Wanna borrow some soap?’
‘No, thanks; I know where you keep it.’
The sergeant nodded, circled a gloved finger in the air and his men saddled up. We were escorted five miles away from the base, then released and given back our identity cards.
Iain grinned. ‘Shall we nip back?’
The fixer buried his face in his hands. If we went back he wouldn’t come with us, and we ‘wouldn’t be so lucky next time’.
I spent most time around the presenters in the course of filming their escapades from various tracking vehicles. You probably never heard the one about the glamour model, the dwarf, the Spaniard and the three stooges. These six characters were the stars of the Classic Rally of Mallorca 2009.
I spent a day doing a recce of the route with the other tracking drivers to gauge time and traffic flow, and to recognise key route markers. The presenters had been paired with co-drivers that in some way parodied their persona.
For some reason Hammond was hooked up with the dwarf, and May (the beast!) got the glamour model. Clarkson was given the Spaniard who couldn’t speak English,