Press Releases - Rookie driver claims he speaks to dead people during races

Rookie driver claims he speaks to dead people during races

"She asked me to tell her sister that she was sorry and to look inside an old jar in the hallway. So then I had to find a 54 year old woman named Susan Groves in Dunstable to pass on the news. It took me two days!"

These are the remarkable stories from rookie racing driver Benjamin Yacobi who claims that when he's speeding round in his Formula 3 Renault dead people start speaking to him, sometimes even giving him tips.

"One chap said he was going to start following my career and then tried to give me tips on my racing line. He said I was connecting to the apex of a turn in Adelaide too early. And do you know what, I did alter my line and my time improved?!"

Benjamin, who says he didn't believe in ghosts or spirits before he started racing, is a friendly British driver with an unshaven chin and cropped lack hair. When I spoke to him, he shook my hand enthusiastically, delighted to be speaking to a journalist for the first time in his career.

"I hope at some stage to get some PR training as that will help with sponsors. But I might just let my army of dead supporters help me with that - these guys have got great life experience!"

The first time it happened, Ben was speeding down the finishing straight in Rockingham. "This woman's voice just came into my head. It was as though she was sitting in the car next to me. I wasn't shocked, she just kept saying 'can you not make so much bloody noise?'. Of course I talk back and have conversations with them. I told her 'I'm really sorry but I've got to finish this race, there'll be another 45 or so laps I'm afraid'. We had quite a nice chat in the end, but my race engineer was confused as hell."

He says he's getting to know a few local characters but Ben says it can be off-putting in foreign countries. "I can understand the French but when I was racing in Crimea this guy kept screaming at me and I couldn't understand a word. I'm not even sure what language it was."

Soon Ben will be starting his first full season and he is considering signing up to the Polish Series. "I'm going to start taking Polish lessons. I can't be going through a whole year listening to a language I don't understand. Sometimes the local dead people can speak English but it'd be rude to make them speak my language when I'm the visitor."

However he thinks this can give him a dig advantage at some tracks. "I figured out that most if not all of the people who speak to me are people who either lived, died or spent time on the land the circuit is on. Once I chatted to a driver who died in a fireball on the track. He would scream a lot every time we went through a particular corner. Poor chap."