Hollywood star Idris Elba takes pole position on the grid as he lines up to take the drive of his life in a revelatory, adrenaline-fuelled documentary charting the colourful origins and secret history of how speed changed the cars we drive.
It’s an international driving tour that will take him from his doorstep in Hackney to the racetracks of America via the Scottish Highlands and the Arctic plains of Finland. As he travels the world, he will reveal the unexplored political, social and historical circumstances connecting the early stories of speed from the American prohibition era, through to our modern-day driving culture.
Here’s a fast fact about Idris: he started driving at age 14, unbeknownst to his own parents!
“I drove a car at 14, which was pretty risky. My mum and dad didn’t know I had a car – I’d bought a car and I was driving about. But other than that, I wasn’t into anything extreme, I think I had a pretty ordinary teenage life. But rally driving has always been a strong influence in my life. It was always on the TV back in the day when I was a kid. It was like rainy weather watching, when I wasn’t allowed to play out. My dad worked at Ford and he used to bring home old steering wheels, and I used to have them on my lap pretending to be a rally driver.”
Idris Elba: King of Speed will air on Discovery Channel (StarHub 422 / SingTel TV 202) from July 7, 9:50pm.
How our editor got up to speed for his first drive of an F1 car.
