The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [94]
Clarkson had won, so he was in jubilant form, propping his fag up in the air like an antenna and reminiscing about the last couple of days. He handed me the key and grinned. It weighed heavy in my hand, solid metal bound in red patent leather, the Bugatti oval enamelled in the centre.
‘You’ll fucking love that.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh …’ He shook his head. ‘Epic.’
The inbound crew were soaking up the booze. It looked like the makings of a damn good party, but we had orders from Nigel to get moving.
Down in the basement, producer Alex Renton and a giddy Jim Wise-man were circling the Bugatti like frenzied hornets. Wiseman was wearing a shocking set of Elvis sunglasses.
‘Nice shades, Jim.’
‘With a future this bright, you know it makes sense. Speaking of which, mmm, I see you’re holding the keys to a Vey-Ron. We’ll see you out of here, mind the kerbs.’
I climbed inside the cabin and landed in the U-boat captain’s chair. I shut the door and felt the cockpit pressurise. Gauges and dials littered the maroon leather dash, poised to confirm when every one of the 1001 horses had been deployed. The main console was made of tortoiseshell-patterned steel. A pistol-grip gear selector at its centre looked primed to fire torpedoes. The wheel was so sturdy it must have been solid cast metal. All the controls were hard-wired to the functions of steering, gear-box and engine.
I pushed the start button, and a heavy-duty starter motor screeched the engine reactor into life.
The Veyron had been boxed in, nose into the wall of the underground car park. Rear vision was poor, probably because nothing stayed close enough to worry about. But it meant that my first minutes behind the wheel were spent sweating bullets, reversing it up a narrow parking ramp at less than one mile an hour.
Casper and I finally headed into the amber night. A single wallop of the throttle dealt with the Blackwall Tunnel, then we headed east into the City. The crew stopped somewhere near ‘Wall’ at 2am to set up an elevated tripod, to get a glimpse of the Bugatti hammering around a big roundabout system. Then the police turned up.
Casper’s brow furrowed as he climbed out of the passenger seat. A few minutes later he was back. ‘Spoken to the Law. They’ve got a message for you: “Give it some shit”.’
My pleasure.
With adult supervision, I floored the Bug around this roundabout for the next twenty minutes. In a straight line the four-wheel drive could accelerate the rig from 0 to 60mph and back to 0 again in less than five seconds.
I reached under the steering wheel and depressed an innocuous silver button to disengage the traction control and dumped the throttle at the traffic lights. The four wheels clawed at the greasy road then shot off. I aimed around the corner and clung on to the wheel just to stay in my chair. It grappled its way across the wet manhole covers with a few minor slippages along what was otherwise a 90mph tramline.
My exuberance got the better of me that night as the warm glow emanating from Casper’s camera encouraged my right foot to slip on the empty carriageways. The kidney pinching thrust that went with every impulse of the accelerator was in a class of its own, and compellingly addictive. Even the strobing flashes through the Limehouse Link tunnel failed to bring me back to the real world. F1, eat your heart out.
We picked up our German escort from VW some hours later and began the two-day journey to Italy. Getting from A to B took longer than the actual race, because we kept stopping to position film crew and because every traffic cop in Western Eurpope wanted to see how fast it would go.
The Bug had a paddle shift to pick from seven gears or you could leave it in automatic and take pot luck. It paid to remember which