They had a great custom-made chase car, festooned with cameras. Called the ‘Frankenstein’, it was essentially a stock-car racer-looking rig, built low to the ground, with a frame built around it to get heavy cameras quickly around corners and with enough acceleration to move the heavy equipment. We were briefed to exaggerate facial expressions, and our hand movements. We didn’t always get it right, so they’d shoot again. We ended up spending maybe 10 days at Willow Springs. It was mid-August, every day over 100 degrees. They kept us supplied with ice packs for our cooled driving suits. Almost every need was met. Nothing seemed too much trouble.

That first day of filming was an eye-opening experience – weird but exciting. I was part of a new team getting together for the first time. The most eye-catching of all are the customised vehicles that are covered with cameras and allow a car or a shell of a car to be driven around while an actor is inside, well… acting. The driver/operator sits way out back and up high. Along with about a dozen other stunt drivers, Robert, our co-ordinator, had us gathered around a table with a bunch of Matchbox cars to strategise our next sequence, carefully choreographing our individual manoeuvres to make the racing look as realistic and as action-packed as possible. I knew a lot of the other stunt guys and each brought a wealth of driving talent, so just about any idea thrown out there, the team would be on board.

I guess I did OK because they then asked me to go to Georgia, where they were shooting ‘Mulsanne Straight’ footage on location. They’d found a long straight through the pine trees outside Statesborough in Georgia. I’d guess it was made more attractive by some local tax support.

Having missed the first few days while finishing up my MC duties for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, I arrived in Georgia the following Monday – straight into an all-night shoot. Taking the better part of the dark hours, we shot a sequence showing a Ford GT going wide – at ‘Arnage’ – while avoiding a Ferrari P3 that had spun out. The GT40, driven by Jeremy Fry (lead stunt driver on Baby Driver) kicked the tail out coming around Arnage and crashed into hay bales, climbing up them and tearing off again in anger. I was put on flagman duty to act as the marshal alerting the oncoming race cars.

“I gunned the throttle and spun, but flashed between the ‘Ferrari’ and the camera car”

As always, each such scene was carefully choreographed, analysed for all the ways to make it right and to double-double-check what could go wrong. After a few rehearsals, the tension builds up, then action is called. The manoeuvre was pulled off expertly and much to the delight of the film-making team. After a few more days getting all the Mulsanne sequences we were off to the next location, an hour down the road.

At Hutchinson Island Raceway outside Savannah, where I’d won a race back around ’97, the unit took it over and dressed it with period 1966 Le Mans advertising to look the part. We spent about three weeks there shooting all kinds of stuff, night, day, dusk, dawn, rain, dry… and shifting straw bales around to relieve the waiting. There was even a reproduction of the little house and garden that back then was on the inside of White House corner.

Then to Road Atlanta – using mainly the back straight and a couple of corners. I spent most of the time in a GT40 lookalike. They had a big articulated truck with a pneumatic cannon, on which they loaded a Ferrari 275GTB shell mounted on a rolling simplified tube-frame chassis. They lined it all up, there was a big safety briefing – one of dozens! – and they fired it. I think they got through two 275GTB shells; after wadding-up a test car, the two ‘Ferraris’ went live.

As our stunt coordinator lined up the cars for a crash sequence, it turned out I would be the first GT40 to deal with the chaos unfolding ahead. The fibreglass shell ‘GTB’ would launch at a range of about 60 yards and would land just ahead of me on the track where I’d be arriving at a fair clip with a couple of Ferrari P3s on my tail. My instruction was to “do what you do in a race to avoid an accident…”. OK, right.

On our first take, with a giant BOOM from the cannon, the Ferrari shell launched and did a full forward rotation to land on its roof, hitting two strategically placed crash cameras which took off like two giant cubes bouncing along the track in front. The lunar-lander look-alike ‘Frankenstein’ camera car came rushing up on the action as we dodged and weaved through the debris field. The launch car from the cannon hit the grass and ricocheted across my bow just as the camera car flashed by for the wide shot. I aimed for the inside verge, at the last instant gunned the throttle and spun, but flashed through between the ‘Ferrari’ and the camera car, which got well and truly T-boned. The second unit director, Darrin Prescott, came up to us after, thrilled to bits, as the scene unfolded with unexpected extra drama. They wanted us just to go for it… but always in a very well briefed, well considered and controlled environment. The truth was that with real cars, real speed, it felt like the real deal… which brought a real thrill to it all.

Back in California, meanwhile, they’d built a fantastic – and I do mean FANTASTIC – reproduction of the 1966 Le Mans pits on a section of the private Agua Dulce Airport, near Palmdale, again 90-odd minutes from LA. I was blown away by the art department’s detailing there – authentic window frames, doors, light fittings – even the media centre. It seemed incredible to me they could take such care – then just tear it all down.

Much of the movie narrative was shot by the first unit there, while we just drove by as background – eight or a dozen of us, in Fords, Ferraris, Porsche 906s, 911s… pits to the right, big blue screens to the left – hiding the rest of the airport. They would later ‘block in’ the grandstands and crowds by CGI there – modern movie magic. But that pit row was something else… amazing. They meanwhile shot the supposed Shelby factory in a hangar at another nearby airport.

Before every shot there was a safety meeting. Everyone involved in a scene would be told what was required and what to expect, all led by Prescott and Nagle. The standing order was “Speak up if anything doesn’t sound right”. They had rain cranes showering the course during many of the night scenes being shot in the pit lane, which gave us all a bit of a thrill of aquaplaning down a runway.

I really enjoyed driving the lookalike GT40s, not least because I could fit into them, while in the lookalike Ferrari P3s and Porsches I was too scrunched up. We didn’t have much contact with the movie’s stars – Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale as Ken Miles – but Bale proved a decent driver and drove some scenes himself.

What I will remember most – apart from the Road Atlanta moment – was shooting the Le Mans start, over and over. They dressed me as Graham Hill, with London Rowing Club helmet colours… and I insisted on the moustache. Every detail had to be right – we’d sprint across as the flag fell, the mechanics cheering us on. And I stood there, and they called ‘Action’ – and for a moment – in front of that huge, fantastic, pit row you could hear a pin drop.

This is what my Dad had always preferred to avoid – the pressure of the Le Mans start. But he’d been there in 1966 driving for Chaparral – and for me, Le Mans ’66 suddenly felt real…