Ben Collins has a respectable racing career, movie credits, and a successful YouTube channel to his name. Despite all of this, he’s most famous for a role that was meant to be anonymous. Collins played the part of Top Gear’s iconic tamed racing driver, “The Stig,” between 2003 and 2010.
Despite hanging up the white racing suit, Collins still knows the Top Gear Test Track like the back of his hand, which is useful as he’s just broken another record on it. The accomplished driver officially set the fastest time in an internal combustion engine (ICE) car while behind the wheel of a Praga Bohemia. The Manual recently caught up with Collins to discuss his record-breaking lap, and the vehicle that propelled him to it.
The Praga Bohemia is “a real weapon”
When asked to describe what went into the Praga Bohemia, Collins didn’t hold back. The driver, who was involved in testing and developing the hypercar, says:
“It’s an amazing car. It’s a real weapon. I think the development process, a lot of it’s going on behind closed doors for a long time before it broke cover, so that when the car came out, it was pretty much fully formed. The carbon monocoque is super stiff. That’s a fantastic foundation for a hypercar.
“Aerodynamics after that are also phenomenal, and that’s been verified in a Formula One wind tunnel,” he continues. “The power unit is a straightforward power giver, going for the turbocharged unit, which is 700 brake (690 horsepower). I suppose the real secret is it’s lightweight, less than a ton. The thing is super agile, very dynamic, authentic; you get real feedback from it. You don’t get unpredictable weight transfers. You’ve just got a pure driving experience, and I love it.”
It’s not all about straight line speed
Despite a blisteringly-fast 0-60 time of 2.2 seconds, Collins maintains the lap time wasn’t set on the straights. Instead, the aerodynamics of the vehicle and its cornering ability played a huge part, despite the fact Bohemia was running on road tires.
“That car has not done that time on the straights,” he says. “It’s done it in the corners, and I was checking the minimum speeds. The follow-through is a very, very fast corner. In a slow car, you can take it flat out easy, no problem.
“Once you get to cars that are sub 10 seconds, one minute ten, it becomes quite a big deal,” he continues. “And so it was not a complete lift off the gas, but still had to come out of a throttle. It was recording a minimum speed of 133 miles per hour, which is the quickest I’ve been through that corner ever. And I would think it had to be significantly faster than anything else. I think it must be a good 10 miles an hour faster than the Valkyrie, which is a car built by Adrian Newey on a bigger tire, I think, is really saying something.”
Collins also highlighted the vehicle’s braking ability, saying:
“It’s incredibly powerful on the brakes. It’s also paired with the particularly intelligent ABS system that I would say is the best I’ve ever driven. That just has a way of delivering you that extra bit of bite just when you need it.
“The occasional moments you get on a track where you think you’ve slightly overcooked it in the Bohemia, it just has a funny habit of just finding it that little bit extra to get you stopped and turned on your way again,” he says. “So, it’s really, really underneath you all the time, but for me that braking system is something that is a peculiarity to that car that is extremely rewarding to drive, get the most out of.”
The Stig still knows his track well
Despite leaving Top Gear in 2010, Collins still turns up on the track he’s most closely associated with from time to time. When we asked if he had any “rust to knock off,” he responded with:
“I hadn’t been there in full attack mode for a while, but I’ve been doing more runs recently on my YouTube channel, so I did have a bit of a warm-up, and actually, I was there the week before with the Lamborghini and the McLaren. But it did feel different going back with the car that I felt had the potential to be the fastest. And particularly Praga, because I’ve been racing with them for three years and got to know them like a family pretty much. I knew how much was at stake.
“So there was no doubt the pressure was definitely there. I wanted to maximize every ounce of potential of the car, and I’m just glad we did. I felt that was as fast as I could have gone in it,” he says.
How does the Bohemia compare to other hypercars?
Both as “The Stig” and as himself, Collins has driven a wide range of hypercars. So naturally, we asked him how the Bohemia compares to its peers. The veteran driver said:
“I think the lap time speaks for itself. I mean, all these cars are so different in different ways. Obviously, pace is extremely important, and the Bohemia has been designed around that. It’s interesting seeing that a lot of the hypercar manufacturers are doing similar things. It’s sort of outright performance over form and beauty.
“I think the great thing with Bohemia is it is a stunning car,” he says. “It’s different and it does stand out for all the right reasons, as well as performance. I think it sits very well alongside its competition, but significantly less expensive than a car that’s only 1/10th of a second faster around that track. I think you get some pretty amazing value for that performance.”
You have another chance to see Collins behind the wheel of a Praga Bohemia in July as he represents the Czech company at Goodwood Festival of Speed.
