pilots james shepherd and chris are racing king of shaves sponsored by a company of the same name which sells shaving products. powered by twin lamborghinis and probably cost about 2 million pounds to build, $4 million. ceo will king says driving the boat is like racing a ferrari on the water at 150 miles per hour, an intense thrill. and a dangerous one, too. skimming along at these speeds, things can go wrong fast. shepherd has won the honda formula 4 series several years running, but it s his first time competing at the british grand prix. any race you do in any series and you make an impression. the fact they re the only british boat in the race amps the pressure up even higher.
especially when you start sliding around the corners as we were, it was a bit of a balancing act between us. the king of shaves is closing in on the front-runners with about four laps to go. we were catching the leaders at about 1.5 seconds a lap and there was enough time in the race. i mean, we were only about 200, 300 meters behind them. 3.11 seconds and that s almost a second quicker than the race leader. they got up into second place. james wife is standing there thinking, wow, oh, my god, this is amazing. he s doing really well. let s keep our fingers crossed. i knew he would be so thrilled as to how they were doing. the king of shaves makes a final bid for first place, but something doesn t feel right. get in! get in. she s loose.
the next minute, absolute terror under water. i thought the boat had gone over and over. it just felt like you were in a bit of a washing machine. a dash cam in the cockpit shows the pilots trapped upside down. king of shaves has crashed. liz and will are desperate to know what s happening. i guess time just froze. all i could say to will is, can you see their helmets? can you see that they re out? there weren t any safety boats in the immediate vicinity, and it was just the silence. and i just thought, james, are you okay? but james is not okay. the pilot s oxygen valves are flooding and they have to reach the surface fast in order to survive. the drill was that chris goes out through the floor of the boat first. which is now the top of the boat. they can barely see each
as soon as i saw his helmet i thought, that s great, we re both out. i remember swimming over to chris and grabbing hold of him. moments later, a rescue crew arrives. james and chris make it out alive, but the boat is totaled. here we have blown up this 2 million pound power boat. the twin lamborghini engines and all the electronics would have all been ruined. king of shaves finishes second to last beating only a disqualified boat. king of shaves have won driven by british guy shepherd at the grand prix, fantastic. it s not the result they d hoped for, but they walk away with their lives, able to sail another day. you know, accidents happen. so, we get on and rebuild for the next race. that s all. we were lucky that day.
i remember saying to chris, it feels a bit loose. there s so much of the boat out of the water, it s just skating. they re going 160 miles an hour when the boat ahead loses an engine, slows down and churns up some wake. the men know they could be in serious trouble. in the middle. we re going to be in his wake. that s all right. it s better than me being on the edge of it. just popped the right-hand side of the boat up and then the whole thing was the physics. it tipped over from that point. we re on our way, that s why. okay, think about this. the king of shaves hits the wave and flips fast and hard. the deceleration was unbelievable. 160 miles per hour to 0 in i think about 15 meters. one minute everything is extremely noisy. think about this. chris and i are keep on it!