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Chapter 4

Snakes & Ladders

My second season produced a 100 per cent finishing record. A string of podiums and race wins put me into the lead of the Vauxhall Junior Championship, battling with talented pilots like Marc Hynes and Justin Wilson, two of the most genuine blokes in the sport. Marc was sponsored by Nestlé Ice Creams and looked a bit like one himself: a tall teenage vanilla speckled with hundreds and thousands. Justin was on his meteoric rise to Formula 1, somehow squeezing six foot four of northern sinew into a soapbox racer every weekend to post stupendously fast lap times.

I dropped cheese packing in favour of studying for a law degree, which absorbed nearly all my time when I wasn’t racing. Turning into a very focused, self-centred daredevil meant my relationship with Georgie suffered. She gently bounced me into touch, and I was so hell bent on my career that I refused to acknowledge that my heart was, in fact, irretrievably broken.

My luck on track dried up around that time and I lost the championship to Mr Hynes, finishing alongside Wilson. But it was enough to get me noticed by the crack outfit run by Paul Stewart, Sir Jackie Stewart’s son. Paul Stewart Racing was known for one thing in every category they competed in: winning.

PSR ran a team in the next rung up the racing ladder called Formula Vauxhall Lotus. The cars ran on fat slick tyres with Formula 1 style wings that shoved the rubber into the tarmac and a 2-litre engine that propelled the car through corners at over 145mph. Sexy piece of kit.

The first test was at Donington Park, a grey circuit in the Midlands. Its sequence of fast, flowing turns was made famous by Ayrton Senna’s gutsy overtaking moves on the opening lap of the 1993 Grand Prix. I watched it more times than I can count.

I scanned the colourful articulated trucks lining the old brick pit lane and found the polished blue and white of PSR at their head. The team were always decked out in matching blue clothing and had a systematic approach to everything they did. The mechanics were like young doctors, and their work area looked like a spotless surgery. I prayed no dirt fell from my shoes as they clacked across the pristine plastic flooring.

Graham, or ‘GT’, the team manager, was a young guy with an endearing smile that belied his ruthless inner ambition. Underneath the rosy-cheeked veneer was a head shrinker who probed the depths of a driver’s every performance via the onboard data logging system and by asking difficult questions.

‘Did you notice we put another hole of front wing on, and you ran a heavier fuel load? How many laps do you think these tyres have done? Do you think a stiffer rear rollbar would help you through the fast corners if we drop the ride height and adjust the camber for the low speed? Why did you change your line into Turn One after lunch?’

Graham used onboard computers that logged the car’s information and driver inputs. They were recorded so accurately that you could analyse every movement of the steering, brakes and throttle to develop the perfect style, which further deepened the mental dimension.

The Lotus accelerated from 0 to 60mph in three seconds and took me by surprise at first. The scenery went flying by and the engine was bumping off the rev limiter, demanding the next gear. Something clicked in my brain that day, because I never sensed speed the same way after that. Once I got used to it, nothing ever felt fast again.

The blind crests of Donington’s Craner Curves were not for the faint-hearted as the sharp descent doubled your acceleration through a long left. In a machine like the Lotus with more relative grunt than grip, you hung your balls over the wing mirrors to take Craners flat, then wrestled the chassis across to the left in time to put your affairs in order for the equally hairy off-camber right known as ‘Old Hairpin’. With tyres stretched to the limit, a tiny error of timing was punished by a rapid departure from the black stuff.

I prepared for a new tyre run to see what time I could set. GT squatted next to me and rested his arm on the sidepod. If I could just impress him enough, Jackie Stewart’s staircase of talent could lead me all the way to F1. After a silence, GT gave me a warm smile. At last I was winning him over. Then he casually said, ‘We’ve just been watching Wilson at the Old Hairpin. He’s flying, head and shoulders braver than anyone else there.’

The words cut me to the bone. I’d have preferred him to have called me a raging poof.

The winter air was crisp, ripe for the engine to produce its best power. After a mega run out of the first corner I took Craners flat out with a squeak of understeer from the new tyres, without compromising my line for the Old Hairpin.

The engine bounced off the limiter in top gear, I dabbed the brake and guided my missile right, carrying an extra 5 mph. It went in so fast the front wheel floated over a blurred apex kerb. I held on, ran wide and mullered the big exit kerbing. Dust spewed up and I knew the lap was already miles faster than anything the others had managed. I wanted to monster their times.

I left my braking super late into the next corner, a fast cresting right, at just over 140. The brake pedal hit the floor. I pumped again. Nothing. I was travelling 60mph too fast to make it. I was leaving the circuit. By the third touch of the brakes I was skipping across the grass, spinning sideways through the gravel trap, then airborne for the remainder of my journey. I stonked into the barriers with the rear left wheel first. It ripped off the suspension, shattered the gearbox casing and whipped the nose into the wall, shattering the front wing. What a ride!

My body took the impact well. I withdrew my hands from the wheel before it spun violently through 180 degrees, which would have broken my wrists had I clung on.

I explained what happened to Graham, who never looked up from his computer when I walked back in. ‘Did you kerb it at the Old Hairpin?’ he asked matter-of-factly as he frowned at my speed graphs.

‘Big time.’

‘Sounds like pad knock-off then.’

‘What’s that?’

The mechanics tutted behind me as they unbolted tangled remains of bodywork from the chassis and half the gravel trap unloaded on to their operating theatre.

‘Sometimes when you hit the kerbs, it knocks the pads away from the discs. You have to pump the brake pedal back up to get them working again.’ He waved a hand up and down for emphasis.

Well, wasn’t I the moron? That kind of general knowledge would have been more useful at the start of the day, but that was how it worked with racing. You either figured it out, or got spat out.

Graham sucked his teeth with interest as he calculated my split time, acknowledging it would have put me fastest by a considerable margin. Then he looked me in the eye to ask if my neck was OK. Seemed he was warming to me after all.

The structure of the Winter Series consisted of two heats that qualified the drivers for the final at Donington – ‘winner takes all’.

Graham taught me that there were no friends in a race and to ‘kill the car’ in the warm-up lap. The difference this made to the temperature and performance of the tyres and brakes over the first lap was significant and helped launch me into the lead of the qualifying heat.

I found myself battling with a Japanese regular from the series who was pressuring me with every trick in the book. He was tapping my rear wheel to unsettle my car into the corners, then driving into the back of me in the straights. The rev counter buzzed higher as the rear wheels left the ground. The gloves came off.

I waited until he was right up my chuff and jammed on the brakes so hard his front wing went under my gearbox and lifted me into the air. All our shenanigans were closing the field up behind us.

He got a run on me down the pit straight, pulled alongside and we banged wheels as we ran neck and neck towards the first corner. The third-gear right required a severe brake to avoid the sea of sandy gravel beyond. He stayed on the outside, ballsy to say the least.

I would sooner have driven off a cliff than be outbraked. I wasn’t backing down. Neither was he, so our futures merged. His front wheel caught my rear and I flew over his sidepod. We rotated around one another in Matrix-style slow motion, and gave the pursuing pack nowhere to go but straight into us. I was T-boned and as the spinning car flew overhead its rear wheel caught my helmet.

As the dust settled in the gravel trap I thought to myself, Not again. I never felt any fear when I raced, so I had to figure out a method for avoiding dumb accidents with people. I quickly rubbed the tyre marks off my helmet – otherwise the marshals would have insisted I bought another one – and trudged out of the gravel.

Graham was not amused, calling me a rock ape. The combined qualifying results put me in twelfth for the final race on Sunday. Overtaking opportunities in down-force cars were notoriously few, so my chances of winning were slim.

On the day of the final I arrived at the circuit early, determined on a positive result. Sir Jackie had already inspected the team ahead of his sponsors and guests, which included members of from the Royal Family. Pandemonium reigned and there were red faces everywhere. The race truck was being lifted into the air on stilts in order to rotate the wheels until their Goodyear logos all faced twelve o’clock. The floor was being washed and a gearbox moved.

Roland, the number one mechanic, was putting the finishing touches to my car’s new undertray. I brought him some tea and he surprised me with a smile.

‘You guys must hate me,’ I said.

‘Nah, mate. You’re out there to win. We don’t care how many times you smash it to bits – we’ll rebuild it.’

It made all the difference having him onside. Roland increased the angle of attack of the dive plane on the front wing by raising it and screwing the bolt into its new hole. ‘Adding a hole of wing’ meant I could steer better behind the jet wash of the other racers. He asked what I thought of our chances. I told him I thought we could win.

The team’s PR lady summoned me to the corporate hospitality unit with my team-mate, reigning Irish Formula Ford Champion Tim Mullen. We arrived on the team’s golf buggy at a marquee the size of a football pitch for Jackie to introduce us to the sponsors.

Three hundred pairs of eyes turned in our direction from across the silver service. Tim’s rusty red suit had seen five innings too many, and my scrunched black number was more bin man than Batman. Then Sir Jackie appeared, the triple Formula 1 World Champion, former Olympic clay pigeon wizard and one of the most meticulous and successful drivers of all time.

Decked out in immaculate tartan trousers with creases that could slice roast beef, a beautifully cut tweed jacket and a bonnie cap, Jackie had the presence of a laird. He gave us both the once over and his beady eyes fell on me like a hawk. I sensed there might be warmth behind them if you were in reach of the podium.

The PR told him our starting positions. ‘Tim is seventh and Ben is twelfth after a shunt in the second heat.’ I wished she hadn’t.

‘Looks like you have some work to do today, lads.’

Och aye, that we did.

Jackie picked up the microphone and delivered a perfectly manicured talk about the team and the format of the day. We were excused.

I knew I had to impress him if I wanted to stay with PSR, and that meant really delivering in the final. I had the overtaking opportunities mapped out in my mind, the perfect start and the fastest laps. Scripts rarely survived first contact with the enemy, but preparing for success improved your odds.

I strapped in and sat on the grid with nothing left to consider except:‘patience, measured bursts’. Jackie made his extended walk down the grid, chatted with Graham for a bit before turning to me. ‘Just remember, lad, it’s what you have up here [pointing to my head], not down there[pointing to my balls] that wins races. The difference between the exceptionally brave and the plain stupid is a fine line.’

I listened carefully to the great man’s advice, but something told me that I would definitely need my balls for this one.

The personnel cleared the grid – bar Roland, who held the jump battery. You fell in love with that last man the way a patient loves his nurse. Before going solo into the unknown, he was your final contact with the world. He signalled a thumbs up and cut the umbilical.

I stared at the pack of racers ahead. The green flag sent us off for the warm-up lap. Cars wove from side to side; one or two accelerated past their closest competitors and nearly collided. Everyone had eaten their Shredded Wheat that morning; no prisoners would be taken in the main event.

The formation closed up at the final chicane. I jumped on and off the throttle and brakes to ensure they were hot as hell. I found my pair of solitary black lines on the grid. You guys are going down …

First gear, revs to 5,400, the clutch bit.

The bright yellow five-second board rose over the gantry. Engines began pulsing. I crept forward an inch.

Red lights came on, then straight off; release, I was gone.

Everyone else froze, I powered off the line, instantly passing two crawlers and sliding past a third as I made the dreaded gear-change through the dogleg from first to second that could put you into a false neutral, with the race passing you by.

The drivers criss-crossed, searching for track position on the dash to the first corner. A queue stacked up on the inside, so I lunged for the outside to pass two on the brakes, hanging on as we squeezed over the jagged exit kerbs. I emerged wheel to wheel with another driver as we accelerated towards Craners. I had the inside line but on cold tyres the odds were even. He lifted first and I surged past. Sixth place already and closing on fifth.

We snaked through the back section of Donington and towards the chicane behind the pits where Jackie was hosting his VIPs. I wasn’t lined up close enough to have a pop at the guy in front until he hesitated and braked early. I accepted the invitation and zapped past. I rode the inside kerbs and slithered sideways on to the straight, adjusting my sights to the view of just four cars ahead.

My Japanese friend in his silver bullet was pushing hard behind the lead group. I gave him a few close-ups in his mirrors to let him know he was next on my menu but it was hard following through the fast turns; you lost the air over the front wing and understeered wide. Running wide compounded the loss of grip because you ended up on the dirty section of track that was rarely driven on, typically covered in ‘marbles’ – chunks of rubber of various sizes that had the same effect as stepping on a banana skin.

After a trouser-ripping 130mph moment on the marbles, I remembered … patience. The opponent’s turn in was heavy-handed and would lead to a mistake if I waited. We nosed over the rise on to the back straight at Coppice, I cut the apex, kept the front wing in clean air and got a run on him.

We drag-raced to the chicane. I pulled alongside, inches apart, and forced his hand. He braked desperately late, compromised his entry line and struggled to accelerate away. I sailed past into the next corner, the very place where we’d built sandcastles a day earlier. That left nine laps to pass two more and catch the leader.

With the race at full pelt, overtaking became harder, as drivers picked their optimum lines and dug in, but I held an advantage under braking. The front group were racing hard for position, trying to force a way past. It was winner takes all.

I lined up on Justin Wilson in third place. I got a run on him at Old Hairpin and gave him enough trouble through McLeans to pass him on the way out.

I chased down second into Redgate and found that my tighter line into the corner was yielding a couple of tenths a lap. The cornering mantra was always ‘slow in, fast out’; taking a wider entry maximised your speed down the straight. But when the car allowed it, you could drive ‘fast in, fast out’. It bagged me second place.

I saw Marc Hynes in the distance. Mr Whippy had managed to steer clear of the carnage I caused in the heat and was chasing down another championship. I was faster, but catching him with only a handful of laps to go was a tall order.

I set fastest lap after fastest lap until I finally got to sit on his gearbox. He was sluggish through Old Hairpin. I aced it. I powered up his right side, around the flat-out kink towards McLeans. With time running out, Marc put me on the grass.

I needed tarmac to round the kink at 120. As I went sideways my life should have flashed before me, but I was treated to a close-up of his Nestlé Ice Creams livery instead. I kept enough throttle trimming the lawn to lose only five car lengths. He had to defend at the chicane. I could taste victory as we rushed to complete the penultimate lap.

As I prepared to knobble Marc with the scissor shuffle, we were red flagged. A big accident behind us meant the race was being stopped. The jammy dodger took another title win ahead of me in second and Justin in third.

GT appeared, positively beaming. ‘If you can drive like that every time you’ll piss it next season. Incredible race; Jackie thought it was fantastic.’

A dream ticket was at the tips of my fingers. With the benefit of their vast experience I would have a clear shot at winning the main title …

But it was not to be. The feedback – via GT – was that I was ‘too old’. PSR wanted to take on Justin. Halfway though the next season I made the jump to Formula 3 National Series instead.

* * *

The Formula 3 car was made of beautiful carbon fibre. Everything from the steering wheel to the gear lever were proper bits of kit. It had sophisticated push rod suspension like a Formula 1 car, with four-way adjustable dampers and a range of critical settings for tuning them.

It reacted to infinitesimal inputs from the driver. Visualising a perfect lap in your mind’s eye was the only way to make the tiny adjustments needed to shave off the thousandths of a second on every corner that constituted the difference between pole and the rest.

Everything ran on a knife edge in Formula 3. It was the birthing pool for F1 talents, from Mansell to Schumacher and the great Ayrton Senna.

I won most of the remaining races from pole position, with fastest laps and a couple of lap records. It was time to move up to the International Formula 3 series and duke it out with the big boys.

In 1997 I took the seat vacated by Juan Pablo Montoya at Fortec. They were running Mitsubishi engines which had monstered the field in ’96. The team manager reckoned that with me and Brian Smith (an Argentinian!) we should win the championship hands down.

Unfortunately the new spec Mitsubishi was a dud. Brian, Darren Turner, Warren Hughes (who ran Mitsubishi) and I only scored a handful of podiums between us.

It was time to prepare for the British Grand Prix support race at Silverstone. As always my old man was on hand, Marlboro in one hand and stopwatch in the other. He marked my split times through the different sectors and told me where I needed to improve.

He was so charming and gregarious, but he set the bar pretty high. I loved him to bits, but there were times when it wasn’t that easy being his only son – or one of his workmates. They dubbed him ‘Bionic Bill’ because his idea of downtime was to stop working between midnight and five in the morning.

Having a poor engine meant that driving balls-out through the corners became de rigueur. I drove back to the pits after the kind of lap I could only repeat twice without crashing and sat down with David Hayle, my engineer, aka ‘Mole’. Sweat dripped off my finger as we moved the cursor along the analysis screen. Formula 3 was all about perfectionism and absolute focus on one thing. Once that attitude became ingrained, it never left.

Mole lowered his specs and gave me a penetrating look. ‘Do you need a few minutes to gather your thoughts, mate?’

I shook my head. ‘Let’s get it sorted before the next session.’

I recognised Dad’s cough a mile away. ‘Mark Webber’s eating you alive coming out of Luffield …’

I was still glued to the monitor. ‘We know.’ I gritted my teeth, ‘We’ve got power understeer in slow corners.’

‘Why haven’t you done something about it then? You look dog slow.’

My heart pounded and I leapt to my feet. ‘Well go and smoke your fags at Maggots then.’ We were standing eye to eye. ‘I’m pissing on Webber through there.’

No one talked to him that way. His blood was boiling; my temples were pulsing. Silence. Dad tweaked his sideburn between finger and thumb. We would never come close to blows, but my money would have been on him if we had.

‘Give it the beans at the weekend, son.’ And with that, he left.

A couple of days later I did some media work with Uri Geller. It turned out that he was a car nut, a hazardous hobby for someone that warped metal just by touching it. I met him at his mansion on the Thames. He had a 1976 Cadillac that was covered in 5,000 bent spoons. He was a lovely guy and made absolutely superb coffee.

Uri didn’t just bend spoons; he somehow managed to draw a shape that I had only pictured in my mind’s eye: a broken arrow with a cross in its tail. He was full of common sense about sport psychology and was fascinated by my sponsor-finding challenges and my search for a competitive ride to propel me to F1. He conjured up an image I’ve recalled many times since, whenever I’ve felt frustrated: ‘Each of us resides inside a bottle that is being carried by the current of a powerful river: fate. The shore is too far away to reach, but we can rock the bottle by running at the sides and though our efforts are small by comparison to the current we can influence our direction: perseverance.’

I believed in reaching the shore.

I rang Mum ahead of the race. After witnessing my first season she never attended in person.

‘Hey, Mum, I met Uri Geller today.’

‘You’ve upset him, you know?’

‘You mean Dad? I know. All he does is criticise …’

‘He’s very proud. He probably didn’t tell you, but he said he watched you all day at some fast corner called Maggie; said that you were the bravest …’

I swallowed hard. I was such an arsehole.

‘We need more than bravery with this bucket. Maybe Uri can bend the pistons. Is Dad coming to the race?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. He’s cross.’ She sighed. ‘You’re both too alike.’

Uri arrived in the Grand Prix paddock as we were celebrating my team-mate’s birthday a few hours before the start of the race. Brian’s dad asked him to bend the knife we used to cut the cake, then rubbed it on the exposed part of the race car’s exhaust system for luck. Uri left for the grandstand, setting off a chorus of car alarms in his wake.

The race got under way. Brian and I did our best to impress the Formula 1 teams in attendance, but he started to lose power and limped back to the pits. Joe Bremner, his number one mechanic, was first on the scene.

‘What the bloody hell’s gone on here?’

The exhaust had neither bent nor cracked; it had completely disintegrated – but only where Uri’s knife had touched it. I don’t buy into hocus-pocus, but none of the mechanics had ever seen anything like it before.

We didn’t see the fabled forkbender again after that.

I spent a couple of years bouncing around America and Europe, maturing my skills alongside some truly great drivers like Scott Dixon and Takuma Sato. Scott went on to become the king of Indycar Racing. When I partnered him in Indy Lights he was one wild Kiwi who partied himself horizontal. He could also turn on the steely-eyed resolve in a heartbeat when it counted.

I also partnered Honda’s Formula 1 protégé Takuma Sato, a wily, wiry, utterly fearless Japanese. We won races in International F3 and I came second in the Marlboro Masters World Series round at Zandvoort. Taku outqualified me in the dry, but in testing at Spa in Belgium I was comfortably faster in the wet. My car was so good that I was the only driver taking the infamous Eau Rouge corner flat out. As the race itself got under way, the waterlogged track was quickly obscured by a dense mist of spray. Taku pulled into the lead and was first to come within sight of the teams as he blatted down the pit straight, towards Eau Rouge …

Boyyo, Taku’s sublime race engineer, was perched on the pit wall. He dropped his lap chart, hastily grasped his radio and whimpered ‘No Taku, don’t …’

The rain was much heavier than it had been during the test. Taku made it past the first painted kerb with his foot welded to the floor, ran into a pool of water, aquaplaned and spun 180 degrees, straight into the tyre wall. It was pure 24-carat balls, and I absolutely loved him for that.

My performances were enough to gain some interest from a couple of Formula 1 teams and I investigated an opportunity to become the test driver for Arrows. This was the break I’d been longing for since Day One. I didn’t have a manager, so Dad came to the meeting to impart some common business sense to the discussion.

We had a chat with a couple of nice chaps from their commercial team. We guzzled tea and biscuits in the boardroom until it was time to bring out the brass tacks. The test drive was mine for a very reasonable £1.5 million.

I tried not to choke on my tea and wondered what they charged per gulp. I was appalled at my sheer ignorance of the industry and the level of finance shaping these decisions. The sponsors who had supported me so far would turn tail and head for the hills.

But I had a back-up plan. It worked for Michael Schumacher; maybe it would work for me.