01 September 2022
Eighty-five years after three-time Le Mans winner Woolf Barnato famously raced the ‘Blue Train’ from Cannes to Calais. A modern-day Bentley Boy, Steven Kane, has recreated the legendary spirit in a tense four-hour, 14-minute sprint against Saudi Arabia’s only desert passenger train.
Kane, as an official Bentley Team M-Sport driver driving a Continental GT V8 S Convertible on a 298-mile route from Riyadh deep in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula to Dammam on the Arabian Gulf for four hours, the same time as a stretch at Le Mans.
To make the challenge even more complicated, Steven faced several factors; apart from the heat at the time of the event, the hottest place on the planet, he had no idea of the train’s whereabouts and in any event, he had to observe the driving laws and regulations.
With the same Bentley spirit and will to succeed, Barnato beat the train by 4 minutes, and Steven beat his train by six minutes.
I am sure Captain Woolf Barnato would have been proud.
