Who is The Stig?
The debate around “Who is the Stig?” continues, with many Top Gear fans simply refusing to believe that it is (or was?) Michael Schumacher.
I’ll confess now that I have personally suspected that the ‘on track’ Stig is one of a number of different racing drivers, with the actual driver occupying the role changing depending upon who is available to fit within Top Gear’s filming schedule.
I’ve raced nationally & internationally myself in the past, at the opposite extreme my son races cadet karts now, and I can tell you that in all cases the lap-times set by the top few drivers are sufficiently close that any one of them having an off-day can make far more difference than swapping to the next-best driver. Throw in the fact that Top Gear’s Dunsfold test track is often wet, and the cars tested for Power Lap Times are invariably running on road tyres, and once again you have another variable that will make far more difference that swapping the driver.
And I was astonished to see that multi-millionaire ex-F1 driver Michael Schumacher has the time in his schedule to visit the Surrey countryside every week, beautiful though the area is (I live nearby).
My money would instead have been on somebody like Derek Bell (about whom I’ll say more in another post) who is an amazingly talented driver, still very active (I met him at the Nurburgring a few years ago when he was driving an Audi RS6), and lives less than an hour’s drive from the Top Gear test track. Nigel Mansell is regularly found driving in the West-Country too, where he races (purely for fun) a Rotax 177 kart at the Dunkeswell race circuit that he owns.
There has also been speculation that The Stig could be Damon Hill (another retired Formula One driver, like Schumacher and Mansell), Mark Webber (a current F1 driver who finished second in the British Grand Prix last weekend), Martin Brundle or even Ben Collins. I’ll cover these rumours in separate posts.
But for now, at least until this evening’s show, the Top Gear team tells us that “The Stig is Michael Schumacher”. Or at least, it was!
So why reveal this secret now?
It’s no secret that Top Gear has had its budget substantially cut as a result of the recession, so if they were previously paying Schumacher to act as the Stig they may no longer have the money to do so, so now they’ll need to find a new Stig. What better way to make the swap-over than to reveal the identity of the retiring “White Stig” before introducing the new “Blue Stig” (or whatever colour is chosen next)?
Of course, if that’s the plan, then it will throw the credibility of the comparative Power Lap Times into some dispute because there can be no denying that very few people can hustle a car around a race track quite as fast as the legendary Michael Schumacher. So maybe the Stig will get slower?
And of course Schumacher drove the Ferrari FFX around the Top Gear test track last week, and set a new Power Lap time in the process, which means that if Jeremy Clarkson announces tonight that last week’s revelation was merely a hoax then we’ll know one thing for sure:
Probably the only car that has ever been taken around the Top Gear test track by Michael Schumacher is the Ferrari FFX, giving it an instant advantage over every other car that has ever been around that track (as, I suspect, did it’s slick tyres when every other car has run on road tyres!).
And don’t forget that Schumacher is Ferrari’s development and test driver, so he knows the FFX inside out as he helped develop it. So that gives the FFX two advantages:
1) The man driving it knows it better than any other car that any Stig has ever has ever driven around the track; and
2) It was being driven by one of the very best drivers the world has ever known!
And I can understand why Ferrari would wish to do this, not just because it makes their product look dramatically better (indisputably the very best!) but also because in a previous show Top Gear’s regular Stig crashed the Koenisegg …and they wouldn’t like that happening to a FFX.
So maybe it was just a PR stunt, to get massive viewers for the new series, with Ferrari paying for Michael Schumacher to appear on Top Gear and pretend to be the Stig?
My best advice is to be sat in front of your TV tonight, with BBC2 turned on, and watch the latest developments!
And when you’ve seen Top Gear, leave a comment here to share your opinions with the rest of the world. You can share this post too, using the social media links below:
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