The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [88]
I was driving a 200mph Mercedes CLK63 Black automatic, one of the most nimble weapons in the AMG armoury. It was jacked with brute power, boasted a telepathic feel through the tyre to the road, and flew through the mountains like a Messerschmitt. Its carbon-fibre cockpit contained a moulded racing seat that fused you to the ride. The tight suspension and direct brakes made it ideal for arriving late into the turns, pointing in and blasting off on to the next straight. The massive torque of the Affalterbach motor was over-zealous for its tyres; you hung on with both hands.
Iain took to the skies with a two-way radio that he kept live so he could operate the camera joystick and talk me through the traffic without moving his hands. With my eye in the sky, blind corners were no more and I kept a constant picture of the terrain.
Zip, zip, zip to a thundering rpm in fifth gear, running parallel to the rail tracks approaching a bundle of traffic, into a wooded hill with no line of sight.
‘All clear, clear ahead, splash ’em.’
No need to brake, straight past the lot and down the hill.
‘90 left coming up, then two cars, don’t pass.’
Braked down to third, slightly threw the steering, big powerslide, straightened and held behind the two cars. I could see the parallel road coming out the other side of the next hairpin was clear, booted it past the obstruction and entered the corner.
‘Nice one, Ben. All clear.’
I caught a group of bikers strewn along the road like a Hell’s Angels chapter of the pinstriped variety. Some rode in pairs, side by side; the rest were linear and offered little room to overtake. I eased past them one at a time to ensure none of the organ donors fell off their mounts, then caught the two leaders. Alerted to the presence of an infiltrator, they sped up, beards and ponytails whipping in the airstream.
The road rejoined the railway for a straight run and the Merc splashed past with ease. This riled Ponytail, who wound back the throttle on his Milwaukee vibrator and tagged along. It was CHiPS, Swiss cheese style, versus me in a 460 horsepower race-tuned Merc with a helicopter in my pocket …
Iain updated me on a section where the road curled left downhill and crossed the train tracks. The f lat level cutting through the road would act like a jump, the sharp drop that followed like a landing ramp.
As I arrived at the tracks I braked, dropped two cogs to third, released the pins and took off. All four rubbers left the deck on a slight angle across their axis, with some lift on the front left owing to the diagonal cut of the tarmac.
My head kissed the sunroof as I vaulted out of the seat and banged back into the deck, no dramas. And Ponytail …?
I looked up to the head mirror at the wall of tarmac, pine trees and sky behind. It really was a big drop. Suddenly the fat hog flew into view about two metres off the ground. Ponytail was clinging on for dear life. His saddle bags extended from their side mounts like wings, the left one reaching up over the back of his seat. The dynamic effect of his weight over the handlebars kept the nose pointing earthwards, the saddlebags tilted his rear wheel high and to the side, so that I could the spokes spinning.
Ponytail landed his machine with bags and moustache in some disarray. He popped the white flag and cautiously applied the brakes, no doubt scanning for a lay-by in which to hose off the river of gravy running down the inside of his leathers.
At lunch on top of a mountain the following day the boot was on the other foot. Clarkson had been driving the Merc and had somehow annoyed a cyclist on the way up. Jeremy arrived at the top considerably faster than the cyclist, parked up and slurped back another espresso from Heidi’s tavern. Meanwhile the cyclist pumped his pedals for another fifteen minutes and visualised