Anyone who enjoys motorsport and daring stunt action will have almost certainly come across the incredible Damien Walters Formula-E somersault a couple of years ago.

Filmed at a racetrack in Mexico City back in 2016, the stunt was used as part of a marketing campaign to promote the Formula E series. It involved a stuntman producing a death-defying backward somersault over a speeding Formula E car. Not one for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.

The man at the centre of it was Damien Walters, a free-runner, stunt man and actor from the UK. With many years of experience designing and executing stunts, Walters was contacted about the possibility of producing some more magic for the campaign.

Damien recalls how the call came about, and what the process was for coming up with the idea for the stunt.

“I’d worked with the marketing company before and had done the Pepsi Max commercial with them. They called me and said Formula-E were really interested in doing something, and did I have any ideas of something that could be done.

“I did a leap head-first over the car, but I thought about what would be a more interesting way of doing it? I thought about doing it blind and the timings involved, and then I thought we can try and do it backwards as well.

“It was originally going to be a round-off backward somersault and then I thought it would be more interesting to base it on timings.”

The timings which Damien mentions were pretty important. With Formula-E race car sprinting up a the track behind you, timings and calculations need to be precise.

“When it came down to it, it’s simple maths really.” Damien continues.

“Look at the time and distance and then figure out the time at which to perform the jump.

“It was actually my wife, Heidi, who discovered the formula for it. She said ‘we’ll time how long it takes you to leave the floor from the prep for the back somersault – which is bending my knees - and the jump which took around 0.8 seconds on average.

“If the car was travelling around 100km/h, as it was, the car would have covered x amount of distance.”

“In that case, all we had to do was mark out 200 metres. The car would have covered around 22 metres in the 0.8 seconds at 100km/h, and then we worked out the remaining time – there was still 178 metres left.

“It would take 6.6 seconds for the car to cover the remaining distance. So, we put a laser at the top and the car came through on cruise control at 100km/h – it had to be cruise control because if the driver put their foot down it would alter the mechanics of the situation.

“Once the car came through the start, it set a beeper off an the timer started. I looked down at the timer and when it hit 6.6 seconds, I’d make the jump.”

Damien’s description makes the stunt sound almost routinely simple, but it’s spectacularly precise. The official clip on YouTube has already amassed more than 5.5million views, and it’s easy to see why.

While the final stunt was floorlessly completed, getting to that point was about preparation, and a lot of it.

Damien said: “We obviously did it countless times side-by-side to practise. We just kept doing it and doing it for two days until we felt comfortable and then we went for it.

“I remember the first time that the car was going to go underneath me. I had the helmet and pads on and was on a wire which would support me in the event of any issues.

“As the timer got to six seconds, I started to bend my knees and perform the jump. I just thought ‘you’ve gone way too early’. I knew I’d gone too early. I tried to slow the bend but it was too late to get out of the way. I just had to go through with it.

“I clung on in the tuck position upside down and held on to the wire above the track. I literally just watched as the car passed underneath me. It was miles away. It’s only 0.6 seconds, but in terms of distance at that speed it’s about 20 meters, so it was nowhere near.

“Thankfully, Andy [the wire man] held me up. When I came back down, I just thought, ‘well, that’s how close it’s going to be’. There is no going early or going late now, I’ve got to be bang on it. Go late, I get smacked by the car. Go early, I land on the car. So, both ways, it’s not ideal.”

There really was no margin for error, and so this made two elements invaluable. They were the preparation, and trust. Damien and his team spent two days on the track going through practise runs, side-by-side as the car passed alongside him.

There was a question by the marketing agency as to whether he’d be using a Formula-E driver for the stunt, but there was no way Damien would change from his usual driver for something as daring as this.

“They had a Formula-E driver and they said they’d like me to do it with their driver, but I said I had my own driver and had done for a number of years. He’s a good mate and I trust putting my life in his hands.

“I said I’d rather my mate doing it in a car that he’s never driven than a guy who I’d never met before driving at me. That unfamiliar driver could have just tapped the brakes, swerved - anything really. You’ve got to have full trust in the driver and full trust in the preparation.”

Damien has spent many years performing stunts and is one of the most experienced in his field. Since performing the Formula-E somersault, or the ‘Leap of Faith’ as it was known, he has moved on to other projects.

He’s both ambitious and creative, two traits which have led him to write his own movie which is currently under production with shooting to continue in Dubai in January.

However, will we still see him on the other side of the camera in the future?

“I still love performing, I really do love performing.” He says.

“I love to create things as well. To be honest, I’ve never been fussy about what I do so long as I’ve created something and as long as I’m using my mind as well as my body.

“It’s more about being creative than actually doing it. So, if I can get to be creative and to perform, then that would be amazing. However, now I’m getting older, it takes a little bit longer to get up off the floor!”.

Thanks for talking to us Damien!

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ARTICLE (004) - The Vision Behind a Leap of Faith with Damien Walters