Whatever happened, Billy knew he’d have to return to driving. “Being in a race car is probably where I feel my most comfortable,” he says.
Just three months after his accident, Billy got his first opportunity to get back behind the wheel, driving a specially adapted Fun Cup car (which is a bit like a Volkswagen Beetle) at the racing circuit at Brands Hatch.
Amanda watched with some anxiety as her son skidded and drifted around in a specially adapted car with charity Mission Motorsport – Billy, of course, beaming. “He thinks it’s hilarious to see me scared,” she says. “But it’s his passion. I couldn’t stand in his way even if I wanted to.”
It wasn’t the kind of racing that Billy was used to, but it was an opportunity to feel some of the old buzz again.
“He knew he’d go back into motorsport, but I think until racing in the Fun Cup, he wasn’t sure he’d go back to single-seat,” says Rob. For a start, it wasn’t clear at that point whether motorsport regulations would even allow him to drive single-seat cars, like those used in F1, again. No disabled driver had ever raced a single-seat car professionally before.
The guidance from the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) – the international governing body for motorsport – restricted disabled racers from competing in single-seat cars on the grounds of safety.
Nathalie McGloin, head of the FIA’s newly formed Disability and Accessibility Commission, explained that Billy’s licence to race had to be reinstated by the Motor Sport Association.
Either way, that first time back in the driving seat had given Billy a glimmer of hope – maybe, just maybe, he could learn to drive a racing car with only his hands. He decided to appeal to the FIA to have the regulations modified. He knew that their decision might take months, or even years, to materialise. But he was prepared to wait.
In the meantime, to help his friend get back behind the wheel and test whether he could potentially drive a car using only his hands, Jamie took Billy to the headquarters of Carlin Motorsport in Surrey. They are one of the largest racing car teams outside Formula 1. Every year they enter a certain number of drivers in different championships to represent them and drive their cars.
Jamie was already racing with them, and it was one of their cars, driven by Patrik Pasma, that Billy had crashed into on that fateful day at Donington Park.
Jamie initially took Billy there to help get him out of the house. But when he arrived there, the team invited him to try out their driving simulator.
“I started off without doing any gears, just throttle and break, just getting the feel of driving a car using my hands,” says Billy.
Trevor Carlin, owner of Carlin Motorsport, noticed that Billy adapted quickly to this new style of driving. “With a racing driver, if they can drive a simulator, it normally translates to working in a car,” he explains.
Billy returned to the motorsport team’s headquarters again and again, losing himself in the simulator and getting ever more adept at driving with his hands. “We’ve got this leaderboard,” continues Trevor. “A bit like a Top Gear leaderboard, and in a matter of weeks, Billy was in third place, out of 25 drivers. It was staggering. I’ve never known anything like it.”
In late November, after Billy had proved his skill on the simulator, the idea was formed to build Billy a modified car. Engineers were confident that they could build Billy hand-controls that would allow him to drive one of their cars competitively.
And with the design for this groundbreaking car underway, the only thing holding Billy back was the FIA’s ruling.
from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2FuFuFV
via IFTTT
0 Comments