BEN COLLINS I AM STILL A RACING DRIVER AT HEART
Bizarrely, Ben Collins is now best known for a television role where he can’t talk or be identified. But his job as Top Gear’s resident tame racing driver brought him to the front pages of the national newspapers.
Had life taken a slightly different turn earlier on in his career, he could well have been writing the headlines on the sports pages instead.
He showed a lot of promise in his formative years racing in the UK, progressing through Formula Vauxhall Junior, Formula Vauxhall and then on to British Formula 3.
As is the case with so many young drivers, the finance wasn’t there to complete his journey.
Instead, he turned his hand to the small screen while trying to maintain his racing programmes. He raced at Le Mans four times and even had a chance to tackle three rounds of the Australian Supercar series including sharing a Holden at Bathurst in 2009.
Collins has worked on a number of films doing the driving work, including being a stunt double for Daniel Craig in the Quantum of Solace James Bond movie and in the Ford v Ferrari epic that was released in 2019.
Last week, he found time to tackle the Motorsport News readers’questions.
Question: Was it always your dream to be a grand prix driver? Was the interest sparked by your father Bill?
John Charles Via email
Ben Collins: “We had a model of a JPS black Lotus Formula 1 car on the mantlepiece for years and I used to gaze at it. It was a beautiful thing, there was something about the fat slick tyres, and the wings and that evocative livery. I was mesmerised. But, actually, racing was pretty remote. I wasn’t one of those people who would really watch grand prix racing. Dad did but even he would fall asleep: I would watch maybe a lap or something.
“The real thrill for me was being a passenger on any trip that involved dad behind the wheel. There was always space for an overtaking move. Some of his more manic moves came when he had a Rover SD1. They were eyeopeners! I thought it was great fun, and I used to pull the handbrake coming out of the drive and we would go for it. I had a little pedal kart as a kid which was a scaled-down version of the Formula 1 car with all the wings on it and stuff, and I would skid that around on the patio. I remember doing a figure of
