The Show - Production Notes - Rally Car vs bobsleigh
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Production notes
Rally car vs bobsleigh
We were talking in the office one day and someone remembered an old Ford film from the 1960s in which someone drove a Cortina down a bobsleigh run. Wouldn't it be great if we could recreate that, we thought. Sadly, the bobsleigh run owners of the world had a different idea. Something about not being wide enough, or strong enough, or prepared enough, to get all damaged and covered in oil or something. So we thought laterally. If we couldn't send a car down a bobsleigh run, what about, um, a bobsleigh? And race a car against it. Bingo!
The rally car driver, Henning Solberg, proved to be quite handy at the whole driving on ice lark. But not infallible. When he arrived at Lillehammer he immediately commandeered his manager's standard Audi road car to go off and learn the course. Five minutes later he came wandering back up the track and casually announced that he'd stuffed it into a ditch. Oops.
Lillehammer is famous as the place where they invented the cheese slicer. No, really, it is. They even have a monument to it. It's true. Why would we make up something like that? Look it up if you don't believe us.
It's well known that Richard is both up for anything and virtually indestructible, so it's no surprise that he took things to new extremes on this shoot. The Norwegian national bobsleigh team coach advises his men never to do more than three runs a day because of the extreme forces involved. Hammond did seven and was still begging them for another go as the crew were busy packing up their cameras.
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