Story behind John Barrowman's Fifth Gear crash
From The Sunday Times
July 26, 2009
Story behind John Barrowman's Fifth Gear crash
Taking the TV star John Barrowman rally driving seemed a grand idea to Tiff Needell - and it all went smoothly, at first
Tiff Needell
It seemed a good idea at the time: give a well-known television actor a seat-of-the-pants spin around a proper racetrack in the middle of Wales. What's more, rather than a normal car, we'd put him in a £120,000 rally-tuned Prodrive Subaru Impreza. It would make great television, the producer said.
No problem, I thought. He was bound to be slow and would make a willing pupil. I have instructed everyone from police drivers to 10-year-olds without incident. I've even been seated next to Jeremy Clarkson and survived.
The problem, as it turned out, was that John Barrowman, star of Torchwood and pin-up to a million teenagers, proved to be a very good driver: focused, confident and with excellent control and concentration. Right up to the moment he crashed.
Those of you who watched Fifth Gear last week will know what happened. For the rest of you, let me explain: Barrowman had driven the course half a dozen times; I had been instructing him in the dark arts of rally driving and he seemed to be picking it up nicely.
On previous runs, as he crested a particularly challenging hump in the road, the four wheels of the Impreza lifted well clear of the dusty gravel road below. This was the point at which I told him to wait for them to land again, feel for the jolt, then immediately hit the brakes hard, ready for the third-gear right-hander that followed.
For reasons I still can't fathom, this time the Subaru landed slightly awkwardly and kicked to the right. The steering correction was there instantly but the braking was delayed. Knowing he was arriving at the corner a little too fast, he now did what every inexperienced driver does in this situation: he turned into the corner too early.
By narrowing the entry to a corner - a natural thing to do in a moment of self-preservation - you make the exit tighter. To make matters worse, John hooked the ditch at the apex. From the passenger seat, even I could see that we were now rapidly running out of road. I knew we were going off.
The wheels dug in and the rolling began. At these moments the main concern is always: "Where are we going to stop?" I knew that at this part of the track it was downhill all the way to a rocky stream at the bottom of a valley. I shut my eyes and waited for it all to go quiet but I could still hear the sounds of £120,000 of rally car being remodelled as it thudded down the slope.
Once we had stopped rolling - I think it was twice, but it felt like more - the dust settled and the silence descended. I looked across at Barrowman and saw that he, like me, was all right. Safety people were on the scene immediately and we clambered out and dusted ourselves down. We both had the usual seatbelt bruises that a roll inflicts, and he had a tiny piece of glass in his eye, which was quickly removed.
No doubt the insurance company will take a hit and maybe the next celebrity we take on the show will need to be protected with bubble wrap. For me it was another day at the office and I began thinking: "Now, how do we make the best television out of that?"
Racing drivers have a motto. It is not a sophisticated one in Latin, and they will rarely speak it out loud. But they all have it, and I suspect that every person involved in any type of dangerous sport has it too. It goes like this: "It'll never happen to me."
This has served me well over the years and has proved, with a few minor exceptions, remarkably accurate. But as this crash proved, the rule is not infallible. Peel back the veneer of glamour that adheres to our sport and there is a brutal truth: driving fast cars quickly is a dangerous and sometimes fatal game. Today it is easy to forget that, especially if you only ever see it at a safe distance via the television. When you watch Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button grazing the walls of Monaco, when you see Jeremy Clarkson drifting a BMW M5 around an airfield track, or when you watch Sébastien Loeb pitching his Citroën around a mountain course, inches from a precipice, you begin to believe they will never crash. But that isn't a given, and in real life things can and do go wrong.
This was brought home to numbing effect a few days after my crash, with the news that Henry Surtees, John Surtees's 18-year-old son, had been killed in an accident at Brands Hatch. It was a chilling reminder that, despite all the progress in track safety, the danger is still there.
One of the rising talents in British motor racing was robbed of his life by one of those freak moments that somehow occasionally combine to turn a relatively minor incident into a tragedy.
The fact that Henry Surtees was the son of a hero who survived not just car racing but motorbike racing as well, and in an era when death was a common occurrence, somehow makes it even harder to accept his loss.
One can only feel desperately sorry for John Surtees and his family in their time of grief.
Crashes have been an inevitable part of my life as a racing driver. I have competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans 14 times and driven in a Formula One grand prix, not to mention assorted rally stages and countless amateur race meetings. And that's before we even get to my TV presenting.
Many a time the car has not gone in the direction it was supposed to, notably when I clattered down the barriers of the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans at more than 200mph. I guess I'm lucky that the only injury I have sustained has been a broken arm. And that was sustained in one of the slowest accidents I ever had - as a 20-year-old in a Formula Ford.
The freak front-tyre failure that triggered Richard Hammond's near-300mph jet-car crash in 2006 was as hard to predict as the errant wheel that bounced into Henry Surtees's path. You can be conscious of danger but you can't always guard against it.
Those in the ever-expanding business of health and safety will no doubt continue to do all in their power to protect us from ourselves. But I know one thing: without the edge that danger brings, life would be too dull for many of us.
PS: Despite what you may think from looking at the photographs on this page, I really wasn't that scared. Honest.
Tiff Needell co-hosts Fifth Gear on Five
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/features/article6725736.ece
July 26, 2009
Story behind John Barrowman's Fifth Gear crash
Taking the TV star John Barrowman rally driving seemed a grand idea to Tiff Needell - and it all went smoothly, at first
Tiff Needell
It seemed a good idea at the time: give a well-known television actor a seat-of-the-pants spin around a proper racetrack in the middle of Wales. What's more, rather than a normal car, we'd put him in a £120,000 rally-tuned Prodrive Subaru Impreza. It would make great television, the producer said.
No problem, I thought. He was bound to be slow and would make a willing pupil. I have instructed everyone from police drivers to 10-year-olds without incident. I've even been seated next to Jeremy Clarkson and survived.
The problem, as it turned out, was that John Barrowman, star of Torchwood and pin-up to a million teenagers, proved to be a very good driver: focused, confident and with excellent control and concentration. Right up to the moment he crashed.
Those of you who watched Fifth Gear last week will know what happened. For the rest of you, let me explain: Barrowman had driven the course half a dozen times; I had been instructing him in the dark arts of rally driving and he seemed to be picking it up nicely.
On previous runs, as he crested a particularly challenging hump in the road, the four wheels of the Impreza lifted well clear of the dusty gravel road below. This was the point at which I told him to wait for them to land again, feel for the jolt, then immediately hit the brakes hard, ready for the third-gear right-hander that followed.
For reasons I still can't fathom, this time the Subaru landed slightly awkwardly and kicked to the right. The steering correction was there instantly but the braking was delayed. Knowing he was arriving at the corner a little too fast, he now did what every inexperienced driver does in this situation: he turned into the corner too early.
By narrowing the entry to a corner - a natural thing to do in a moment of self-preservation - you make the exit tighter. To make matters worse, John hooked the ditch at the apex. From the passenger seat, even I could see that we were now rapidly running out of road. I knew we were going off.
The wheels dug in and the rolling began. At these moments the main concern is always: "Where are we going to stop?" I knew that at this part of the track it was downhill all the way to a rocky stream at the bottom of a valley. I shut my eyes and waited for it all to go quiet but I could still hear the sounds of £120,000 of rally car being remodelled as it thudded down the slope.
Once we had stopped rolling - I think it was twice, but it felt like more - the dust settled and the silence descended. I looked across at Barrowman and saw that he, like me, was all right. Safety people were on the scene immediately and we clambered out and dusted ourselves down. We both had the usual seatbelt bruises that a roll inflicts, and he had a tiny piece of glass in his eye, which was quickly removed.
No doubt the insurance company will take a hit and maybe the next celebrity we take on the show will need to be protected with bubble wrap. For me it was another day at the office and I began thinking: "Now, how do we make the best television out of that?"
Racing drivers have a motto. It is not a sophisticated one in Latin, and they will rarely speak it out loud. But they all have it, and I suspect that every person involved in any type of dangerous sport has it too. It goes like this: "It'll never happen to me."
This has served me well over the years and has proved, with a few minor exceptions, remarkably accurate. But as this crash proved, the rule is not infallible. Peel back the veneer of glamour that adheres to our sport and there is a brutal truth: driving fast cars quickly is a dangerous and sometimes fatal game. Today it is easy to forget that, especially if you only ever see it at a safe distance via the television. When you watch Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button grazing the walls of Monaco, when you see Jeremy Clarkson drifting a BMW M5 around an airfield track, or when you watch Sébastien Loeb pitching his Citroën around a mountain course, inches from a precipice, you begin to believe they will never crash. But that isn't a given, and in real life things can and do go wrong.
This was brought home to numbing effect a few days after my crash, with the news that Henry Surtees, John Surtees's 18-year-old son, had been killed in an accident at Brands Hatch. It was a chilling reminder that, despite all the progress in track safety, the danger is still there.
One of the rising talents in British motor racing was robbed of his life by one of those freak moments that somehow occasionally combine to turn a relatively minor incident into a tragedy.
The fact that Henry Surtees was the son of a hero who survived not just car racing but motorbike racing as well, and in an era when death was a common occurrence, somehow makes it even harder to accept his loss.
One can only feel desperately sorry for John Surtees and his family in their time of grief.
Crashes have been an inevitable part of my life as a racing driver. I have competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans 14 times and driven in a Formula One grand prix, not to mention assorted rally stages and countless amateur race meetings. And that's before we even get to my TV presenting.
Many a time the car has not gone in the direction it was supposed to, notably when I clattered down the barriers of the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans at more than 200mph. I guess I'm lucky that the only injury I have sustained has been a broken arm. And that was sustained in one of the slowest accidents I ever had - as a 20-year-old in a Formula Ford.
The freak front-tyre failure that triggered Richard Hammond's near-300mph jet-car crash in 2006 was as hard to predict as the errant wheel that bounced into Henry Surtees's path. You can be conscious of danger but you can't always guard against it.
Those in the ever-expanding business of health and safety will no doubt continue to do all in their power to protect us from ourselves. But I know one thing: without the edge that danger brings, life would be too dull for many of us.
PS: Despite what you may think from looking at the photographs on this page, I really wasn't that scared. Honest.
Tiff Needell co-hosts Fifth Gear on Five
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/features/article6725736.ece