Collins - How to Drive: The Ultimate Guide, from the Man Who Was The Stig

Contents

First published 2014 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2014 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN: 978-1-4472-7283-0 HB
ISBN: 978-1-4472-7285-4 TPB
ISBN: 978-1-4472-7286-1 EPUB

Copyright Ben Collins 2014

The right of Ben Collins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Acknowledgements

Jon Butler, for breathing life into this project, applying your invaluable expertise and for your painstaking edit. Few vegetarians, if any, would so willingly endure a charred meat-feast pizza whilst reconstructing a book with a fine-tooth comb and ten million post-it notes.

Mark Lucas, thank you for your inspirational guidance and for sharing my belief in the merits of driving on eggshells. The loyalty and friendship of the whole team at LAW, especially Alice and Julian, has become an extraordinary pillar of support for which Im eternally grateful.

Michelin, for providing technical information about their tyres as well as keeping me on the black stuff this season. Thanks also to the FIA Foundation for their research and campaigning for driver safety, and to the team at a2om international for their pioneering work on hazard perception.

Ryan and Andy at Here Design, Julie Martin and James Provost for applying your conscientious craft to my ramblings.

Dusty, Fergus, Laura and the fearless warriors at Team Macmillan for their ingenuity in bringing this book to market.

EON Productions, for kindly allowing me to share a few trade secrets.

The Metropolitan Police Driving School at Hendon, for sharing your impeccable roadcraft with me and generally keeping us safe at night.

My wife Georgie... thank you for putting up with endless demonstrations of driving theory, for your proofreading and forbearance, and for generally being such a lovely legend.

Bibliography

I couldnt have written this book without the accumulated wisdom of generations of driving experts and the talented competitors who shaped my knowledge during many a duel. I also found the following titles particularly enlightening:

The Technique of Motor Racing, Piero Taruffi.

Steering-Wheel Papers, the Earl of Cottenham.

Drive to Win, by Carroll Smith.

Tune to Win, by Carroll Smith.

Jackie Stewarts Principles of Performance Driving, Sir Jackie Stewart.

The Art and Technicalities of Grand Prix Driving, Niki Lauda

Porsche High Performance Driving Handbook, by Vic Elford.

Sports Car and Competition Driving, Paul Frre.

Police Roadcraft.

The Highway Code.

Source Material

The Department for Transport; accident data kindly provided by Charles More of Actuarial Consultants; driver behaviour research kindly provided by Dr Lisa Dorn of Cranfield University.

Image Credits

All line illustrations by James Provost; 32: (Volvo S60) with thanks to Simon Atlassi at Volvo & Bill Goodell at Arnold Worldwide; 39 Alan Welner/AP/Press Association Images; 43 Drew Gibson; 110, 132, 192 Daily Sportscar (with thanks to David Downes, David Lord and Peter May); 171 (McLaren F1) Ben Collins; 136 EON Productions Ltd; 105, 222 Alamy; 119 (Ford B-MAX) Ford Europe/Blue Hive; 213, 225 Michelin; 259 Michal Podemski

Epilogue:

Drifting through London

Piccadilly Circus, Saturday, an hour before midnight.

Tucked inside a bald cap, Vin Diesels leather jacket and his Dodge Charger, my own mother wouldnt recognize me. Alongside, in a modified Jensen Interceptor, British rally champ Mark Higgins was doubling the lead lady, Letty though with ears like wing-nuts and a long black wig he looked a whole lot more like Ozzy Osbourne.

We were about to drift the V8s around the Circus at up to 70 mph for Fast & Furious 6. And we had three minutes to do it in

Unlike the queues of girls wearing mini-skirts at the peak of an arctic winter, we wouldnt be warming our cockles at the neon-lit bars of China Whites. We would be manhandling a pair of recalcitrant beasts around the circus, danger close, and with a Nissan 370Z camera car tracking from just a few feet ahead.

With muscles like mine its rare to draw comparisons with Vin Diesel, but this was no ordinary occasion. Having spent two hours at the mercy of the girls in the make-up bus, the hairs on my head had been individually water-boarded and locked securely inside a latex bald cap. I spent the time contemplating the best way to pull this gag off without reshaping a famous monument.

Our boss, stunt coordinator Andy Gill, set out his stall of toy cars beside the memorial fountain underneath the vigilant effigy of Anteros. Gill was my hero growing up because he was the stuntman driving KITT, the Pontiac in Knight Rider. He and his brother Jack jumped, flipped, smashed and blasted KITT across America for four years of what David Hasselhoff called non-stop, rock n roll, ballsout fun. You wouldnt believe a softly spoken gent from Georgia enjoyed such a violent pastime, but Andy has forgotten more about car stunts than Ill ever know.

A few scratches of chalk later and the pavement at Andys feet was ready to simulate the action with his Matchbox collection. The two hero cars would drive up Piccadilly towards the roundabout, make a sharp left towards Regent Street then switch right to slide onto Coventry Street, finally making another right down Haymarket. Sideways all the way, obviously. I want you guys touching door handles. Reckon you can do that?

Clearly a rhetorical question. We moved off to the cars. My ride was a lowered 1970 Dodge Daytona, so lowered that the front tyres caught inside the wheel arches when you turned them. With a 5.4-litre Chevy V8 under the hood, horsepower was not a problem, and the stripped-out chassis that resembled Frankenstein from the interior made a good power-to-weight ratio.

The similarity between my and Marks machines ended with the engine. The Jensen would squat on its rear tyres whenever Mark planted his right foot, causing it to grip more and more the harder he gassed it sideways. Meanwhile the Bird, as the Dodge was known, kicked like a mule and spun its wheels if you so much as coughed near the throttle. Getting the two cars to match their speeds and rate of slide, which is essential for a tandem drift, would be no mean feat.

When the car travels sideways its footprint naturally covers a wider area, and thanks to Google maps our area was half the size we were expecting. Westminster Council had stuck a bus lane on the roundabout, and to add insult to injury the pedestrian kerb from Shaftesbury Avenue had been extended by about 8 feet. That left a gap on the road of 22 feet, about a foot longer than the Bird in full drift.