WHAT DRIVERS WILL DO FOR MONEY
TRYING NOT TO GET MURDERED
Justin Keen’s short-lived exploits in Formula 3000 in the early noughties were funded by a small group of private backers intent on living what the Brit calls “the James Hunt motor racing lifestyle”. That’s how he ended shooting a movie that — his words again — “bordered on soft porn” in New York.
Keen’s patrons had bought into a business in the USA and thought they could bottle the experiences they were enjoying as they travelled Europe watching their driver compete on the international arena. The film was planned as a marketing tool for a venture that involved fast cars and, if you believed the hype, beautiful women.
“I played the role of a racing driver hanging around with rich blokes who came draped in hot chicks,” recalls Keen, who managed five F3000 races with the Monaco International and European Minardi teams in 2001 and 2002.
“There was one scene where I was driving a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS with the police in hot pursuit and a girl sitting next to me.
“The implication was that she was doing the kind of thing most blokes can only dream of. I always remember the director was a guy called, appropriately enough, BJ. It was all a bit cringeworthy to be honest.”
Keen isn’t sure what became of the film and whether it was ever completed. But he’ll never forget some of his experiences with the backers, whom he declines to name.
“Putting money into my career was basically an excuse for these guys to fly to Europe for the weekend and get up to all kinds of mischief,” says Keen, who quickly segued into sportscar racing and now concentrates on his commercial property business. “I witnessed all sorts of things.
“I found myself in seedy places mixing with some pretty dodgy people. On at least one occasion I remember thinking, ‘I could get murdered here!’”
RADIO GA GA?
Touring car star Tom Coronel barely had two guilders to rub together as he set out on a Benelux Formula Ford 1600 campaign in 1992. So when the Dutchman needed a new battery for the three-year-old Mondiale he’d been loaned for the season at Zolder early in the year, he knew he was in trouble.
It was actually Coronel’s second new battery of the weekend. He managed to wreck the
