How Michael Schumacher made Top Gear’s The Stig look “like an idiot”

"Britain’s least successful grand prix driver.” 

With that headline, running in 40-odd-point text on the right-hand side of a double-page spread, readers of the August 1992 edition of Car magazine were introduced to Perry McCarthy. On the opposite side, in a singularly ‘route one’ piece of art direction, McCarthy was photographed in his regular clothes – apart from a crash helmet – at the base of a ladder, craning his neck upwards to take in the vista as the ladder vanished off the top of the page. 

You had to turn the page to see a portrait shot of the man himself. It was, perhaps, a portent of his later career as ‘The Stig’, the anonymous racing driver on TV’s Top Gear: when he ‘outed’ himself as The Stig to promote his autobiography Flat Out, Flat Broke, the BBC fired him and dropped the character from the show. 

The interview, a typically entertaining piece by the late, great Russell Bulgin, presented a wry but sympathetic portrait of a driver who had finally, after much ducking and diving and knocking on doors, got his big break in F1 – albeit with an utterly terrible team, Andrea Moda. Indeed, just as the September issue of Car was going on sale, McCarthy was taking part in what would be his last grand prix weekend. 

Perry McCarthy, Andrea Moda S921 Judd

But there was still a glimmer of light. Perry had friends. Lots of them. Potential backers liked his ‘can do’ attitude and could look past the paucity of wins on his CV. Bulgin had been one of these in his previous capacity as sports editor of Motor magazine. 

“I didn’t back McCarthy because I thought he was spectacularly talented, the next Ayrton Senna,” he wrote. 

“I helped Perry because he was the only driver who ever rang up to ask.” 

Michael Schumacher claimed his maiden grand prix victory at Spa that year. Lower down the news order was the widely predicted demise of the risible Andrea Moda equipe, following the arrest of team owner Andrea Sassetti on fraud charges. On first acquaintance with the all-black S291 car, McCarthy had quipped that all it needed was a set of brass handles to look like a coffin; when a flexing steering rack put him in the wall at Raidillon in practice, it almost fulfilled that function. 

This was the season where Williams and Nigel Mansell laid waste to the rest of the field in the reactive-suspension FW14B. Benetton was testing its own system over the course of 1992, but had been struggling to resolve the issue of air contaminating the hydraulic fluid, causing the car to behave inconsistently. 

Rather than put Schumacher in the reactive car before it was mature, and potentially give the whole idea the thumbs-down, Benetton assigned test driver Alessandro Zanardi to do the majority of the development work. When Zanardi fell ill and was unavailable for a Silverstone test, team manager Gordon Message required a suitably daring last-minute replacement. 

Benetton introduced its reactive suspension on the B193

McCarthy got the call and arrived the next day. As he described in a recent episode of F1’s Beyond The Grid podcast, Perry was quick considering his lack of actual F1 experience – the Andrea Moda had completed but a handful of laps all year – but he made the mistake of consulting Schumacher for advice on how to go quicker. 

Well – no racing driver is going to give up their hard-won secrets of speed willingly, are they? 

“I asked Michael,” said McCarthy, “‘How do you drive the lap?’ And he walked me through the entire circuit.” 

The way Perry tells it, for the most part Schumacher didn’t mention anything he hadn’t heard before. 

“I just said: Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Me too. Yes. Yes. Yes.’ 

“But then Michael said: ‘And I take the Bridge corner flat out.’ I said: ‘No. No, no, no. I’ve been trying that the whole time, but it just doesn’t work.’ 

“Still, Michael insisted: ‘I take that corner flat’.” 

Michael Schumacher

From 1991 to 1993, Bridge was what fans of a certain vintage would call a “big balls” corner, fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the Eau Rouge-Raidillon complex at Spa. For two decades or more the BRDC, which owned Silverstone, had struggled to manage the natural outcome of a group of cars arriving at Woodcote corner at speed, jostling for position; in the 1973 British GP, Jody Scheckter initiated a shunt there that accounted for 11 starters failing to see the chequered flag. 

Turning that corner into a chicane failed to work, and building another ungainly-looking chicane slightly upstream in 1987 also proved sub-optimal. That chicane was named Bridge but, in the major revamp of 1991, it became part of Luffield as the Bridge name transferred to a new corner, the is-it-or-isn’t-it-flat right hander leading into short infield loop. 

Ironically, in definitively solving the Woodcote problem, Silvestone had created another. 

After Abbey, this largely flat circuit came to a slight crest before a dip as it passed under the bridge that gave the new corner its name. It had a largely blind entry – and was blind at the exit, since the track’s new trajectory hugged the earth embankment on the driver’s right. 

“That’s where I’m going to buy a ticket for when I come and watch,” said Martin Brundle at the launch, as reported in the pages of Autosport. 

Those who followed Brundle’s advice got their money’s worth at the British Grand Prix that year. Having lived up to his reputation by blocking Ayrton Senna’s attempts to lap him, Andrea de Cesaris suffered a suspension failure on his Jordan 191 and arrived at Bridge with the car already in pieces, having rebounded off the barrier just before the bridge itself. Satoru Nakajima and Alain Prost almost became collateral damage as they arrived on the scene over the blind crest. 

Andrea de Cesaris, Jordan 191

Come 1994 and the approach speeds to Bridge would be cut via the addition of a chicane at Abbey, but for a brief period this corner would be a barometer of skill and bravery. 

“It really got to me,” said McCarthy. “I thought: ‘If he can do it, so can I’. But inside I was screaming: ‘I can’t do it!’ I had tried, but the car was moving around way too much.” 

Eventually he summoned the courage to keep his right foot in over the crest and at the turn-in point. And then he had to catch the resulting snap of oversteer at around 180mph. 

“I nearly crapped myself,” he said. “My hands were faster than Bruce Lee’s in a kung fu movie.” 

Returning to the pits to face Schumacher’s race engineer, Pat Symonds, McCarthy consulted the racing driver’s book of excuses. 

“I said: ‘Pat, can we check the tyre pressures? I think something’s wrong.’ Then he came back, knelt down next to the car, grinned, and said: ‘So, my friend, sounds like you had a little moment out there, huh?’” 

McCarthy naturally denied all knowledge, only to be confronted with documentary proof. 

“That’s funny,” replied Symonds, “because the telemetry shows you on opposite lock at 290 km/h…” 

“It was Michael. He told me he takes Bridge flat – so I did it too,” McCarthy contested.  

Pat Symonds, Race Engineer with Michael Schumacher, Benetton B193B

Symonds just chuckled and explained: “Michael does take Bridge flat – when he’s running low fuel and on qualifying tyres. You were out there on used race tires and with half a tank!” 

That’s when McCarthy realised he’d been had. 

“Whether he did it intentionally or not, I don’t know. But he fired me up. And I ended up looking like an idiot. 

“But that’s how I was wired: as a racing driver, things like that drive you. I couldn’t understand how he was so much quicker – but I should’ve just trusted myself.” 

McCarthy’s F1 career fizzled out after this, and a subsequent Williams test, but his brush with a future world champion furnished him with a rich source of anecdotal material. And, as those who have read his memoir will know, there’s more. 

“Things happen to McCarthy,” wrote Bulgin in that 1992 interview. “Somebody up there is having a great time with me, he says…” 

How Michael Schumacher inspired this sim racer’s bold Silverstone win 

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