Racing With Disability

I thought I'd share my experience of becoming a racing driver and what I've gone through. Despite being partially disabled I wanted to find a way to race as naturally as possible and to race on equal terms. This means I have to be judged on equal terms which is quite hard when you have no fine throttle control in the rain, nor have any idea where your feet are (because you can't feel them or move them!)

Racing with a disability

There are plenty of disabled racing drivers out there, each with their own issues and challenges to deal with in order to race, Billy Monger being probably the most well known, along with Nicolas Hamilton.

This is my situation - I suffered a spinal injury in 2011. Although I can now walk I do so with aids.

I can't feel nor can I move my right foot
I can barely feel my left foot and have very little power in it - I cannot stand on tiptoes and am able only to pull it up
My right leg is weak and lacking feeling - almost no feeling from the knee-down and diminished feeling above the knee with significantly reduced power in my thigh
I have constant nerve pain - that horrible feeling when you bang your funny bone, is how both legs feel 100% of the time; add to this a constant possibility of random electric shocks that can affect just my foot or my whole leg and the drain on one mentally and physically
The only relief from the pain is exercise (alcohol helps too . . although not ideal if you want to race)

Because I can't feel or move my right foot, it has to be used for the throttle only so I left-foot-brake. That would be a bonus ordinarily but racing in the rain is incredibly challenging where fine throttle control is essential.

In my first car, I had a number of small modifications including:

Aluminium plate with a side attached on throttle pedal so that my foot doesn't slip off the pedal without me knowing
Amber light affixed in front of the instrument cluster so I can see when my foot is on the brake pedal
Row of red LEDs stuck on top of the dash in my line of sight so I can see how much I'm pressing the throttle

Because I can't feel the throttle nor can I pull my right foot back, when I started racing I found that I was still pressing the throttle while I was trying to brake. Despite having seen this I learned to drive this way and simply got used to it, and have adjusted my driving accordingly over previous years. Not ideal when you are looking for small margins. . Even with the LEDs it was hard to be cognisant of those while hurtling round a race track when you're a novice. Just getting used to handling the car was enough to begin with. It meant I had to brake earlier, getting back on the throttle earlier and trying to rear-wheel steer the car in some corners. As I've come to realise this isn't ideal. However, it has taught me what a car feels like when the back end is moving around at high speed and it's certainly improved my reflexes.

I was constantly struggling with understeer as I'm still on the throttle trying to push a rear-wheel-drive car round slow corners so often ended up lifting off deliberately when I realised often too late, which unsettled the car, caused issues with handling and lost me time.

I just accepted this was how I had to drive . . . . until 2018 when I had coaching from a top flight, professional racing driver who races GT3 cars.

Below is a short history of my achievements since I started racing in 2016.