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I liked the book, but it certainly wasn't a "tell-all" autobiography.
So I'm left with some questions:
1) Why was he so nice, after all, he's been labeled (repeatedly) a traitor by TG staff. Everything he wrote was about how good the people were, even the ones that he didn't really care for.
2) About the only "negative" I could find - he claims the moral authority to write in his own name.... how do I get this thought out, TG has never been a place where one sought a paradigm of virtue - rather it's 3 old blokes having fun with cars, with the occasional barb to garner ratings (e.g. the quip about Mexicans)
3) which leads me to: Was this book simply another diversion and Ben Collins is still their TG Stig? the benefit is he now has a name for himself (he says this in the book that he loved the anonymity but wanted to use it to get a F1 ride). He even says in the book that the only thing he didn't like was the inability to use his fame - but he came to "terms" with that... and then runs into the ending with the question still posed "why did you throw your perfect job under the bus?" He has a couple partial answers, but they don't seem genuine.
One interesting factoid, in the last TG I watched, they brought Ben "back" to help out injured vets in an off-road racing event. Hammond said that the only reason they brought the traitor back was because of his extensive off-road racing experience. Let me sum up all of his experience in these words - he has none (except for a brief bit running a drug runners car around a battlefield). He certain doesn't claim any racing experience, and given his thorough description of his racing; it seems odd he overlooked it.
to me the book seemed like a poorly conceived smoke screen to allow Ben to use his fame as "Stig" to get an F1 ride. And to be clear, I'm fine with that - he, as unknown stig, beat other F1 drivers in the reasonably priced car, which, to me, gives hope to the common man.
Still, it's an interesting read - although I did have to look up the word "lairy." I always thought they said Larry, and I wondered who's Larry?
So I'm left with some questions:
1) Why was he so nice, after all, he's been labeled (repeatedly) a traitor by TG staff. Everything he wrote was about how good the people were, even the ones that he didn't really care for.
2) About the only "negative" I could find - he claims the moral authority to write in his own name.... how do I get this thought out, TG has never been a place where one sought a paradigm of virtue - rather it's 3 old blokes having fun with cars, with the occasional barb to garner ratings (e.g. the quip about Mexicans)
3) which leads me to: Was this book simply another diversion and Ben Collins is still their TG Stig? the benefit is he now has a name for himself (he says this in the book that he loved the anonymity but wanted to use it to get a F1 ride). He even says in the book that the only thing he didn't like was the inability to use his fame - but he came to "terms" with that... and then runs into the ending with the question still posed "why did you throw your perfect job under the bus?" He has a couple partial answers, but they don't seem genuine.
One interesting factoid, in the last TG I watched, they brought Ben "back" to help out injured vets in an off-road racing event. Hammond said that the only reason they brought the traitor back was because of his extensive off-road racing experience. Let me sum up all of his experience in these words - he has none (except for a brief bit running a drug runners car around a battlefield). He certain doesn't claim any racing experience, and given his thorough description of his racing; it seems odd he overlooked it.
to me the book seemed like a poorly conceived smoke screen to allow Ben to use his fame as "Stig" to get an F1 ride. And to be clear, I'm fine with that - he, as unknown stig, beat other F1 drivers in the reasonably priced car, which, to me, gives hope to the common man.
Still, it's an interesting read - although I did have to look up the word "lairy." I always thought they said Larry, and I wondered who's Larry?
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