Mark Higgins is still a supreme helmsman

TOPGEAR: WHAT’S THIS WE HEAR ABOUT COCA-COLA BEING USED TO GIVE YOU MORE GRIP?

MARK HIGGINS: You would not believe the difference. It gave us four times the grip. The whole road network in Matera is cobbles – very, very polished cobble – so you have nothing. I mean NOTHING. For the poor guys on the bikes, they wouldn’t have been able to ride on it. They’d just lose the front end everywhere.

So you spray Coke, a very light film, let the sun bake it for 10–20 minutes and you’re away. The opening sequence you see on the trailer, that was our first day of filming, and we probably put down too much grip. You saw the black lines that were left behind? That was for real. That’s how much rubber was being left on the surface.

TG: HOW DID FILMING GO OUT IN MATERA?

MH: It was last summer in southern Italy, so really hot and we were out there for seven weeks. We’d had some rehearsals for the car which we mostly did down here (Longcross test track in Surrey). The cars were built quite late anyway, so we didn’t really do much before they were shipped away. And then we had to find out what they actually did when we were out there.

We had a little kart track, which we’d go and do some testing at, and there was a big car park area if we wanted to test the pod car, or run some scenarios with traffic. We could set out other vehicles just to see how that worked.

TG: DRIVING AS JAMES BOND, IS IT A MATTER OF BEING AS LAIRY AS YOU CAN?

MH: Not really. Bond’s about being efficient and in control, so you have to think about that. Generally it’s about toning it down a bit, trying to make it a little bit smoother and faster. But beyond that you’ve got to remember that the camera is often seeing something different, and what I’m thinking looks cool, they’re not even looking at. So it’s getting that understanding – and safety is a big part of it. You don’t wanna come out of a big drift, think, “Yeah, that was great” and then hit the brakes because the next thing you know you’ve got a camera car up your arse. You’ve got to be very wary of what’s going on around you all the time. And there’s the radio calls and different procedures and so on – I take it for granted now, but when you go on your first job it’s a minefield.