Karting and wider motorsport

I'd love to get back into racing, but I'm so rusty. Back in the day, I was a regular at Daytona Sandown Park and won a couple of championships before going off into esports and trying to break into motorsport that way. Sim racing was very green at that stage though, it wasn't really ready.

I tried a couple of talent searches to break into the sport. The first televised competition I did was "So you want to be an F1 driver" where I got to the final 50 out of thousands. I had to get a driving license just to take part, lol, I was very young. Then I tried my luck in a sim to reality type championship called "V1 Championship" and won that. It was meant to be televised too. We went through psychometric tests and all sorts, then the TV deal fell through. I was on track to get a seat in Formula BMW until that happened, so that was gutting. I knew realistically I was out of chances by then. I was only interested in reaching F1 and being about 20 by then I realised I was getting too old for that path.

Truth is I'd never have built iGP were it not for those setbacks. I also founded a sim racing team and we were really competitive, held a lot of world records and won the iRacing World Championship in 2011, beating Team Redline (Max Verstappen's team). I got to be very close to a lot of cool stuff that happened in that era. For example, I was at the GT Academy final the year of the Gran Turismo movie, with Jann Mardenborough. One of the drivers from my team was in the finals and got down to the last 5 going by memory, so I was there for most of it for a front row seat.

Years later I got the chance to race Lando in go karts before he made it to F1, and had a few other fun experiences, then pretty much hung up my helmet to focus on being a dad and running a business. I'd still love to get back into the sport at some point, the problem I have is I can't treat it like a hobby. That's why I've avoided it. It's like that Steve McQueen quote, when you're racing "Racing is life. Everything else is just waiting".

I'd love to get back into racing, but I'm so rusty. Back in the day, I was a regular at Daytona Sandown Park and won a couple of championships before going off into esports and trying to break into motorsport that way. Sim racing was very green at that stage though, it wasn't really ready.

I tried a couple of talent searches to break into the sport. The first televised competition I did was "So you want to be an F1 driver" where I got to the final 50 out of thousands. I had to get a driving license just to take part, lol, I was very young. Then I tried my luck in a sim to reality type championship called "V1 Championship" and won that. It was meant to be televised too. We went through psychometric tests and all sorts, then the TV deal fell through. I was on track to get a seat in Formula BMW until that happened, so that was gutting. I knew realistically I was out of chances by then. I was only interested in reaching F1 and being about 20 by then I realised I was getting too old for that path.

Truth is I'd never have built iGP were it not for those setbacks. I also founded a sim racing team and we were really competitive, held a lot of world records and won the iRacing World Championship in 2011, beating Team Redline (Max Verstappen's team). I got to be very close to a lot of cool stuff that happened in that era. For example, I was at the GT Academy final the year of the Gran Turismo movie, with Jann Mardenborough. One of the drivers from my team was in the finals and got down to the last 5 going by memory, so I was there for most of it for a front row seat.

Years later I got the chance to race Lando in go karts before he made it to F1, and had a few other fun experiences, then pretty much hung up my helmet to focus on being a dad and running a business. I'd still love to get back into the sport at some point, the problem I have is I can't treat it like a hobby. That's why I've avoided it. It's like that Steve McQueen quote, when you're racing "Racing is life. Everything else is just waiting". Solar Smash

I'd love to get back into racing, but I'm so rusty. Back in the day, I was a regular at Daytona Sandown Park and won a couple of championships before going off into esports and trying to break into motorsport that way. Sim racing was very green at that stage though, it wasn't really ready.

I tried a couple of talent searches to break into the sport. The first televised competition I did was "So you want to be an F1 driver" where I got to the final 50 out of thousands. I had to get a driving license just to take part, lol, I was very young. Then I tried my luck in a sim to reality type championship called "V1 Championship" and won that. It was meant to be televised too. We went through psychometric tests and all sorts, then the TV deal fell through. I was on track to get a seat in Formula BMW until that happened, so that was gutting. I knew realistically I was out of chances by then. I was only interested in reaching F1 and being about 20 by then I realised I was getting too old for that path.

Truth is I'd never have built iGP were it not for those setbacks. I also founded a sim racing team and we were really competitive, held a lot of world records and won the iRacing World Championship in 2011, beating Team Redline (Max Verstappen's team). I got to be very close to a lot of cool stuff that happened in that era. For example, I was at the GT Academy final the year of the Gran Turismo movie, with Jann Mardenborough. One of the drivers from my team was in the finals and got down to the last 5 going by memory, so I was there for most of it for a front row seat.

Years later I got the chance to race Lando in go karts before he made it to F1, and had a few other fun experiences, then pretty much hung up my helmet to focus on being a dad and running a business. I'd still love to get back into the sport at some point, the problem I have is I can't treat it like a hobby. That's why I've avoided it. It's like that Steve McQueen quote, when you're racing "Racing is life. Everything else is just waiting".