Page 6 - The Automotive Alchemist - Andy Saunders

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In Vienna with TNT.
The other truck-based event she enjoyed was the 1985 British Truck Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. Claustrophobia was given the prestigious honour of being a celebrity pace car.
To get good photos for the programme, I was asked to attend the Press Day a couple of months before. All manner of photographs were taken, but when this was finished they held a short but authentic race to give the press the opportunity for action pictures. One of the drivers asked me if I’d like to ride as passenger. One hundredth of a second later I was in his truck donning
helmet and harness and it was an experience I will remember forever. The feeling of entering the downhill ninety-degree left-hand corner, called Graham Hill Bend, at about seventy-five miles per hour, in a truck some eleven feet tall, and looking out of the door window only to see the huge tyre wall virtually facing me as the tyre seemed to struggle to keep itself on the wheel rim was something I probably won’t ever forget.
On race day my job was to lead the trucks around the warm-up lap of the track, before their rolling start, as a pace car would do, and it was brilliant. A car less than
three feet high being followed by two lines of towering race trucks. One of my highlights of race day was to see Barry Lee, as he completed his lap of honour, do something I have never before seen. He entered the straight in front of the grandstand and then, with the elegance of a ballerina his truck pirouetted as he executed the most beautiful handbrake turn in his race truck – incredible and what a showman! I have since read a bit about Barry Lee and in his career of different classes of motor racing he has won fourteen hundred races, something that is unlikely to be beaten.
74 THE AUTOMOTIVE ALCHEMIST