Ben Collins Stunt Driver

Great job guys, nice fall.

Ah, lovely. Didn't need that one.

- Thanks a lot. - Thanks, Ben.

Ah, cheers, Andy. Sweet, thanks.

I'm Ben Collins. I've been a stunt driver on Batman, Bond, Fast and Furious.

I've also played the masked racing driver

on a popular motoring programme called Top...

Hello, Ben.

Thanks for joining me at such short notice.

Oh, it's, it's an absolute pleasure.

Uh, do you not think this would be easier on the phone?

You will soon understand the need for precautions.

Yep, you're a known paranoid and, uh...

We've known each other for years, anyway.

- And you're certain of this? - Your name's Barry.

You're the psychotic stunt coordinator,

uh, whose got, sort of this massively overblown sense of secrecy.

I brought you here because I need someone with a very specific set of skills.

Okay, go on.

It's a high-profile feature film

that requires a high-speed car chase.

Well, you have cable-tied the right man for the job.

The scene is set at a high-security weapons store,

at a top secret location, manned by heavily-armed mercenaries.

Some of the guards hear the sound of an engine roaring to life,

and our hero car, with you driving, naturally,

leaps up from an underground bay and the chase is on.

The guards, realising it's a rogue vehicle,

open fire on the car that's racing through the weapons store,

avoiding other vehicles and gun fire.

Armed with blanks?

In the main, yes.

- In the main? - With the alarm raised...

A guard triggers the electric gate to seal the facility.

You, in the hero car, must make it through before the gates close.

Providing you get through, you'll begin to make your escape

off-road around the outer perimeter of the store.

After avoiding further gunfire, you will then be pursued by a 4x4.

This means that the hero car must run well off-road.

Okay, I think I can handle that.

Could you just rewind to the part about the blanks?

Once you have made your way onto the main road,

the car needs the speed to outrun the 4x4.

After this, you'll then be pursued by two further vehicles,

yet to be decided by the director.

Any idea what they are, or...

The last attack will be from the air,

either by plane, helicopter or by attack drones.

Naturally, the aircraft will be armed.

With blanks?

The feature film is set in the present day, so no old stuff.

You have 48 hours to get out there

and find me the perfect car for this stunt.

Great. You've got yourself a stunt driver.

Now, although Barry the stunt coordinator's recruitment techniques

are a bit unorthodox, to say the least, he does have an exciting mission.

But it's quite a tough one because it's not that straightforward,

picking a car that performs just as well off-road as it does on it.

And, I'll tell you now, I'm not picking an SUV.

They claim to be masters of everything, but really,

they don't do anything that well.

And the other thing that is playing on my mind is this aerial attack,

because whether it's a plane, a heli or a drone,

all of them have a massive top speed, and I need something that can outrun it.

But I do know a place where top speed is almost unlimited.

This is Rockingham Motor Speedway,

a 1 .5-mile piece of Americana

that looks like it crash landed in the middle of the English countryside.

This seven-degree banked super speedway is the fastest of its kind in Europe.

But, it's not just the track that makes it feel like you're in the deep south.

Because Rockingham has a fleet

of America's greatest gift to the motorsport world,

NASCARs.

Born out of the days of moonshiners,

running illegal whisky at high speed across the southern states.

It's now a multibillion dollar global motorsport empire.

Now, the secret of NASCAR's success is its sheer simplicity.

Because, here I am, sitting inside a space frame cage,

basically covered in steel sheeting.

Up front is a bellowing V8 push rod engine

that kicks out 600 horsepower,

slaved to the rear axle

by this gigantic prop shaft.

It sits on these great, big Goodyear bags of rubber

that's gluing me to the track when I wind the engine up.

Given an open stretch, easily I can bust it past 200.

And that's enough to keep a helicopter or a drone

or pretty much whatever it is that is coming at me

from an aerial attack, on its toes.

Gonna get the hammer down, baby!

I just love this car.

It reminds me of the good old days I had here

racing in the ASCAR series, when I won the European championship,

and set the lap record, which still stands.

So, this NASCAR has super speed, so it gets a massive tick in the box,

in terms of evading aerial attack.

And it can maintain those speeds for extended periods,

so, another important tick there.

The only thing that is troubling me, when I'm travelling in a straight line,

I have to turn the steering wheel quite a long way to the right.

That's because this car is built to turn left and kind of only left.

So, what I'm gonna do is take it onto the infield

and see how it fares when I turn right.

It's so unstable and the brake pedal is so stiff.

Jeez.

Okay, that wasn't very good or dignified.

The brakes just aren't designed to be leant on that hard,

because you hardly brake on the oval.

Because the wheels are pointing the wrong way, when I turn right,

you just get this massive understeer,

touch the throttle and the back end lights up,

because the axle's pointing the wrong way as well.

It's like driving, I don't know...

A wheelie bin.

Here we go. There's another tight hairpin.

I'm dreading this.

Keep turning, keep turning, nothing's happening.

I think I'll be doing that all day long.

I love this baby, but I think I'll have to retire it and find something else.

Something like that looks pretty nice.

Now, I know Barry said no old cars,

but if it was good enough for Steve McQueen in Bullitt, it'd be rude not to.

Now, this is a bit more like it!

A proper American muscle car.

The 1965 Ford Mustang was built to chew up road courses like this one.

Now I should have no problem tackling a few lefts and rights.

I love these old cars.

You can feel the heritage of it. You can smell the leather.

You can smell some gasoline, actually, to be honest.

You've got lots of movement in the Tyre

that, really, you can embrace it and drive the car to its limit.

I drove a car just like this one in Fast and Furious,

chasing through the streets of London.

Now, that high-pitched sound you're hearing

is the inside wheel spinning, so there's obviously...

There's no lock diff in the back putting traction

through both rear tyres, which is not good for making forward progress.

It's, uh, pretty spongy and not really that stable,

and the jelly-like suspension...

Well, you can't exactly say it corners like it's on rails.

It's all right, granddad.

The beauty of the '65 Mustang, though,

is it does look the part, and I'll give it that.

But I don't think I'll get many points for that

when I'm under attack from live rounds,

from whatever it is that Barry's got in store for me.

And as much as I love this track and these machines,

my search is going to have to Cary on elsewhere,

because I think that when it really comes down to it,

these old boys are going to let me down.

You have one new message.

Ben, don't think I'm not monitoring your every move.

I told you, no old cars.

Stop disobeying orders and carry out the mission.

Otherwise, I will be forced to take extreme measures.

Now, as much as I love old school American muscle cars,

those ones just threw up far more questions than answers.

They are totally impractical, fragile even by modern standards.

But, what I do still need is something with the NASCAR top speed

that corners like it's on rails.

In short, what I think I need is a supercar.

And there's none more capable or more loaded with technology

than the one I'm driving next.

Welcome to the future.

This is the 650S, the latest creation from McLaren

and a quantum leap in terms of car design.

Every inch of this technical marvel

has been engineered to make it go faster than its rivals.

From the integrated front splitter that creates downforce,

to these unique door blades that help generate incredible grip and balance.

And then, there's the engine, a twin-turbo V8 warp drive

that propels the 650S to a top speed of 207 miles per hour.

Now, that really is flying machine speed.

Now, I'm fortunate enough to have driven

well, nearly every supercar in the modern era,

from Bugatti to Ferrari, Aston Martin to Lamborghini, all of them.

And they all have one thing very much in common,

which is that they're different to this McLaren,

because this car is truly unique,

in that it has liquid suspension, and I'm not joking.

It's got hydraulic fluid that rushes across the suspension very, very quickly, and responds when you need to shore up some support in a corner.

And it's absolutely incredible to drive, because it's so responsive.

And if you're wondering where this mythical technology comes from,

well, of course, it comes from Formula 1.

McLaren have been involved at the sharp end since the '60s,

and a lot of the active technology on this car

was banned from Formula 1, because it was an unfair advantage.

But all is fair in love, war, supercars and stunt sequences.

So their loss is my gain.

And the other good thing about Formula 1 technology is that it's tough.

This car is made from a carbon fibre mono cell body

that sits around the driver like a cocoon.

So it's fantastically protective in a crash,

as well as giving you the support in the corners.

Now, that should be good for taking a bullet or five, if it comes to that.

With this kind of technology,

the 650S can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds,

and come to a dead stop in just under 29 meters.

Now, some of those figures are a little bit hard to comprehend,

so what I need to do is a practical experiment