by Ben Collins
Our entry was withdrawn before the race and it would be four years before I could return to continue the journey.
There was never a straight line in my career. I was given a drive at Donington in an ageing Le Mans prototype, the highest category above GT. The car I wanted to be in was the Ascari piloted by South African Werner Lupberger, a silver arrow with vents like shark gills, a razor-sharp nose and plenty of sponsors on the livery. It was reliable, fast and sexy. My machine was dayglo orange dotted with black rectangles that neatly camouf laged the tank tape holding together the bodywork.
Werner was on pole. As he led the field in this round of the FIA World Sportscar Championship, his engine cut out. My misfiring heap was barely mobile at the time and promptly died at the same corner, so I walked back to the pits with him.
Werner was as brown as a berry, with hair like a hedgehog and a thick Afrikaner accent. He looked exceptionally fit. In the course of conversation he mentioned that Ascari was running a series of shoot-out tests to find him a team-mate. He suggested I go for it.
The team was owned by Klaas Zwart, a Dutch engineering genius who made a billion from the oil industry. Klaas was bald and tanned and never sat still.
‘There’s twenty guys on the phone right now, F1 drivers some of them, and none of them can match Werner’s pace in the Ascari. Tell me why I want you in my team …’
I told him I would win races, that I was the man to push Werner, that no one else would work harder. Klaas took me at my word and arranged an evaluation test. Next stop, Barcelona.
Even at 7am the heat was making its presence felt. Ascari’s number one mechanic, Spencer, looked me over with unsmiling eyes. His work area was spotless, every spanner, every component just so. We made a fitted foam seat and I asked about adjusting the pedals.
‘That’s how Werner drives it. Should be good enough for you.’
The Circuit de Catalunya had some brutally fast corners that went on for ever. The other turns flowed from one to the next, giving little respite. I watched Werner exit the fast corner on to the pit straight at 130mph. Within 300 metres of him stamping his foot to the floor, it was licking along at 180 and generating nearly 4G in the corners. He brought it into the pits and the belts over his chest rose and fell as he drew breath. He stripped to the waist, revealing muscles as shredded as Rocky Balboa’s, then chewed into his drinks bottle like a butcher’s dog.
I climbed aboard, tightened the straps until I could barely move and scanned the array of switches and LED lights that lined the dashboard. I began firing the engine and heard the most beautiful bark of V10 power. The Ascari LMP’s Judd F1 engine churned out 650bhp on a Lola chassis. With no power steering it demanded hand-to-hand combat.
Werner chilled out and enjoyed the show as I spent my first laps hitting the rev limiter. The Ascari accelerated so fast that you had to pull through the gears on the sequential box as fast as your arm could snatch the lever. The power would spin the wheels in fourth gear on a dry track, so you didn’t switch off for a second. The wind at 180 blasted through the open cockpit and tried to rip your head off.
Braking from high speed using the giant F1-style carbon disc brakes involved standing on the pedal. I applied twice my body weight in pushing force to activate the down-force grip. After twenty laps I lost all feeling in my right foot.
The faster I dived into the corners, the more the wings gripped and the heavier it steered. It was like going ten rounds in the boxing ring and I was hanging off the ropes. My arms were jacked full of lactic acid and the temptation to ease up on the wheel was immense, but that meant slowing down or ending up in the wall. I loved this beast.
When I returned to the pits, our race engineer appeared and stepped casually in front of the car with his clipboard. Brian was wiry and had a moustache like Dick Dastardly. ‘How was that, then?’
There was no disguising the effort I’d put in. My chest was heaving and I was sweating bullets. ‘This car … is awesome … the best thing I’ve ever driven.’
Werner asked me how I found the steering by comparison to Formula 3.
‘F3 was a piece of piss.’
‘Yessus, man,’ he grinned. ‘Wait till you try it on new tyres; that makes it even heavier.’
At the end of the day Brian gave his verdict on my performance. Werner’s time charts were metronomic, mine weren’t, but I was the first driver they’d tested who could match his pace on old tyres. The seat was mine. I was signed by a works team.
To max the speed of a Le Mans car for four hours at a time required a supreme level of strength and endurance. It meant starting a completely new physical training regime.
I spent four hours a day in the gym, pushing tonnes of weights in a variety of unpleasant ways – attaching them to my head, running with them and pushing repetitions until I could barely lift a pencil. Then I’d run or swim for hours to build stamina.
Back in the days of leather helmets and goggles, an endurance race was a different kettle of fish. When Duncan Hamilton won Le Mans in 1953, he was so drunk that the team offered him coffee during the pit stops to keep him going. He refused, accepting only brandy.
These days Le Mans was a twenty-four-hour sprint. The cars withstood thousands of gear-shifts, millions of piston revolutions and constant forces on every component. You couldn’t afford to break them, but you couldn’t afford to slow down either. You took turns with your team-mates to thrash the living hell out of it. We drove every lap like a qualifier. The physical and mental commitment to maintaining that performance was absolute, making it the purest all-round challenge in motor racing.
The eclectic mix of experienced amateurs and professionals raced an equally diverse range of machinery, from brawny Ferrari and Porsche GTs that resembled road cars to the 700 horsepower flying saucers loosely called ‘prototypes’ – basically Formula 1 cars wearing pretty dresses.
Audi’s prototype was the one to beat. Their mechanical reliability was matched by outright pace. A gearbox change used to take a couple of hours in the old days. Now when Audi blew one, they bolted on another, complete with suspension joints, in just four minutes.
In 2001 the rain was torrential for nineteen hours of the twenty-four, and the swarm of cars skated along the straights like skipping stones.
From midnight until four in the morning I hammered around an eight-mile track, avoiding an accident every time I put the power down.
On my first visit to Le Mans I was lucky to even make the graveyard shift, following a disastrous run in the daytime. The crew had whipped off the wheels and banged a fresh set of tyres on to the red-hot discs whilst I stayed in the car. As the fuel hose slammed home and started pumping, I felt cold liquid fill the seat of my pants.
I thumbed the radio button. ‘I think I’ve got fuel running down my neck.’
A look at the fuel rig revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but my backside was swimming in icy liquid.
There was no time for debate. Besides, I couldn’t believe it myself. I drove away and my skin began to tingle at first, then started burning. This wasn’t imaginary. I was forced to pit again. Werner was in the crew bus attending to the blisters on his hands and caught the first glimpse of my burning buttocks.
‘Vok, you all right, man? That’s one hot botty.’
Hours later it was my turn to drive again. Raindrops the size of golf balls created eruptions in the standing water. A journalist saw me waiting my turn in the garage and said, ‘You must be absolutely dreading this. It’s your first time here, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t wait to get out there,’ I said, jogging on the spot. ‘This is what it’s all about.’
He probably wrote me off as cannon fodder.
The team manager was Ian Dawson, who cut his teeth at Lotus Formula 1 team back in the days of Colin Chapman. He still had the retro moustache to prove it. Ian appeared at my side, lifted one of his radio cans and yelled into the front of my helmet. ‘It’s absolutely torrential out there. Harri’s just done thre
e complete 360 spins down the straight at 160 miles an hour. He’s coming in this lap. We’re bloody lucky to still have a car. We’re running seventeenth. There’s plenty of time. Just take it easy.’
The intensity in his voice spoke volumes. I was holding the baby.
An empty space in front of the garage was surrounded by the Ascari boys. Fireproof masks covered their faces, but I could see Don the mad Kiwi itching his nose with the wheel gun, big Dave on the fuel hose flicking his ankle to loosen off, Spencer with the other gun bouncing on his quads to warm up.
At any moment the space would be filled and I would have twenty seconds to climb in, strap up and switch on.
Every one of the boys had a critical job to do and they shared the pressure of the moment. The fuel man had to ram the hose home in a single clean movement. It sounded easy, but it wasn’t. If he got it wrong he could barbecue every member of the team.
The mechanics on the pneumatic guns had practised the drill over and over again, so they could get clear as fast as possible without cross-threading a wheel nut. If any one of us made the slightest cock-up, it would cost seconds of hard-fought track position.
The car appeared, larger than life and shedding a heap of water. Harri Toivonen fought the belts off and leapt out. I barged past him and took his place. The seat felt wet and warm as my suit absorbed the water.
Harri lifted his visor and helped me with my belts. His face was red, eyes bulging, chest heaving. I pulled up both thumbs to let him know I was in OK and could finish the job myself.
The Ascari dropped on to the deck; the signal was given. My hands were poised over the ignition and start buttons and I cranked the motor. It was already in first gear. A touch on the throttle provoked a lightning howl. The Kraken was fully awake. I slipped the clutch and pulled away into the night.
I was soaked to the skin within seconds. Goblets of water fell out of the sky, whirring towards me at warp speed. As I slid under the Dunlop bridge my visor picked up the blurred lights of the Ferris wheel and intermittent bursts of flash photography. Only die-hard fans stayed out in this.
I sped on, my headlamps carving a 50-metre tunnel through the darkness. I accelerated away from Tertre Rouge in third gear and hammered down the Mulsanne straight, scanning for other cars, searching for puddles. The glistening surface ahead gave nothing away.
I had no idea where Harri had run into trouble. If I made the same mistake I might not be so lucky. I approached the first chicane, scanning sideways along the Armco barriers for something to reference: the marshal’s post, the tree, the gap in the wall, anything that wouldn’t move, for use as a braking point.
I turned right a little for the chicane, then regretted it and straightened again as the car aquaplaned. My stomach tightened as the wheels lost contact with the road; I resisted the temptation to over-correct the steering or brake harder and waited for the car to ‘land’. The engine note returned, telling me the worst was over.
I accelerated cautiously out the other side and back on to the straight, short-shifted into fifth gear and everything went deathly quiet.
The car hit a river of water on the left side of the track at a speed of 150mph. All four wheels lost contact with the tarmac and I travelled 100 metres in freefall. The rear of the Ascari yawed to the right, verging on a fatal high-speed spin, crossed to the right side of the track and ran fast towards the grass. Once there I had another four metres before engaging with the Armco barrier. The odds favoured a hit more than a skim. Broken suspension at the very least.
Drastic action was required.
I stopped correcting the slide and centred the steering in a supreme effort to keep off the grass. As the wheels brushed the white line bordering the circuit the puddles retreated and the car straightened up. The Mulsanne straight had two chicanes to prevent speeds exceeding 250mph. The Rain God had bequeathed it a third but I now knew where it was – and how to drive it.
I motored on, savouring the guilty pleasure of a close shave. No need to tell the team about that one. Sixth gear was redundant because you couldn’t hold the throttle down long enough in a straight line to engage it, unless I could locate the rest of the puddles. I chuntered along in fifth gear and counted the seconds between the big puddles, forming a mental map of the sections of track where it was safe to go faster next time round.
The first lap confirmed that Mulsanne was the worst affected straight and I began adjusting my lines accordingly. I remained cautious, but the car was revelling in the conditions. It was giving so much feedback through the tyres.
The team were quiet on the radio and there was no chance of seeing the pit board. I was alone, but contentedly busy in the mad world of Le Mans at night in a monsoon. I developed a rhythm and took my chances, passing one car after another, straining every rod in my retinas as I searched for a hint of tail-light or a familiar silhouette in the clouds of spray that cloaked every one of them.
The racer ahead might be a prototype as fast as the one I was driving or a GT car travelling at 100mph. The driver might be on the pace and in the zone, or half asleep, or gently urinating himself in response to the conditions.
The first he would know of my existence would be when his cockpit rocked from the blast of my jetwash as I passed his front wheels. Riskier still was tracking down another prototype caught behind one or even two of the slower GTs.
Every sensible bone in my body urged caution. But too much caution and I could be caught in their web for eternity. It was best to take a risk, splash past them and move on. I moved to overtake one guy just as he summoned the courage to hump the car ahead of him, which I couldn’t see. He swung towards me and elbowed me on to the grass at the exit of the curves. I gathered it up and outbraked him at the following chicane as two GTs collided with each other. It was carnage.
I took my chances, like everyone else. The laps flew by, an additional puddle formed on Mulsanne and I figured a cute route through it without lifting. Before I realised it, an hour had passed. The low fuel light on the dash plinked on. I flicked a toggle to engage the reserve tank for the trip back to the pits.
I drove the in lap hard, not forgetting the pit lane might be flooded too. Earlier in the day I’d watched another driver skidding a damaged GT into the gravel pit at the pit entrance. He’d tried to push it out, but was forced to abandon it by the marshals, only metres away from his pit crew who were powerless to help him.
I snaked through the barriers, slowed and engaged the speed limiter. The Ascari’s engine popping and banging like a machinegun, I found our pit amidst the jungle of hoses, boards and crews of other teams.
‘I don’t need tyres. These ones feel great; can we just check them?’ Spencer dived under the wheel arches with his torch and gave a thumbs up seconds later. With a perfectionist like Spencer you never had to second-guess the verdict.
The atmosphere vibrated with tension. Ian looked even more stressed than usual. Perhaps I needed to start pushing harder out there.
‘How are we doing? Is everything OK?’
Before Ian could answer, Klaas leaned over the cockpit. ‘Slow the hell down. You’re the fastest bloody car on the circuit. Take it easy out there, for Chrissake.’
Brian emerged from his warren of computers and calmly announced over the radio: ‘You’re in fourth place. You’ve unlapped the leaders, so you’re now on the lead lap.’
Unlapped the leaders. We were in the big league. No time to contemplate. A hiss and a thud dropped me to the deck; another roar and I was gone. Team Ascari’s Le Mans hopes rested solely on Car 20.
I wanted to get back into the thick of it, check the puddles were still where I remembered and pick up the rhythm.
After about forty minutes a yellow glow started pulsing in the gloom at the edge of the circuit. You never took the warning beacons lightly at Le Mans. I closed up on another racer and rode shotgun until we caught the safety car.
We joined the group bunched behind it, braking hard to avoid a concertina. I just hoped the
guys coming up behind me would do the same. Some people swerved around to keep their tyres warm – pretty pointless on wets, worse if you spun on a puddle at 30mph.
I wanted to get past the pack quickly at the re-start and escape their muddle. It beat hanging around to be wiped out by another banzai racer coming from behind.
As we passed the floodlights I recognised former F1 driver Mark Blun-dell in an MG prototype just ahead. He might help clear a path.
I listened carefully for the all clear. ‘Safety car is in, green, green, go, go, go …’
We slithered on to the pit straight, past a near stationary Porsche GT. I had really good drive and stayed welded to Blundell’s tail-lights, hoping to see where the hell he was going in the spray. I pulled out of the jetwash, flew past Blundell and outbraked two more GTs into the first corner.
Back into the groove. The rain kept stair-rodding down. The puddles swelled and then withdrew. Every lap was different. I kept updating my mental map, sliding through mayhem and living the dream. We were closing in on the leading Audis.
The Ascari filled me with confidence in the rain, but the guys on board the Bentley coupé, with its enclosed roof, weren’t feeling the love. Their windscreen was so fogged up that when Guy Smith was driving he couldn’t see through it. The rain forced eleven retirements and a whole lot of walking wounded.
At 4am it eased up a bit. After four hours in the hot seat I was nearing the end of my stint, running the Ascari hard along Mulsanne, when something knocked the wind out of it. The engine misfired; the beast lost speed. I flicked on the reserve tank. No change. The engine was dying.
I was a long way from the pits. The Ascari managed a few more fits and starts, finally cutting all drive at Indianapolis. I pulled up at the Armco, radioed the team and got to work. If I could just remember what Spencer had taught me and Werner during our invaluable engineering induction, I was saved. I reached for the emergency toolkit with Spencer’s words ringing in my ears. ‘If you end up using this toolkit you’re probably fucked. Just do yer best.’
