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‘My dad would always stand on the inside of the circuit at the hairpin. He watched to see where the best drivers were braking…“You’ve got to brake here, at least a metre later than the other competitors.”’

MY DAD HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY MANAGER and my adviser. I remember years ago, when I was about twelve, in Junior Yamaha and at a race track giving an interview. I said, ‘My dad gives me advice on what to do on the track, but I don’t listen to it because he doesn’t know what it’s like out there.’

I regret saying that because it’s not true. I remember I was angry at the time because things were not going so well. Dad’s got a much wiser head on his shoulders than me so he knows a lot of the stuff he says is true. He’s always right. It got to the point where I took bits out of what he was saying and then added my own bit – what I thought should be right. I think that’s why we work well as a team. We gel together.

At a young age, he was very hard on me and now that I am older and a little bit wiser I fully understand and appreciate why. I can probably guarantee that he was harder on me than any other driver’s father was on his son. I don’t just mean in life at the track – I mean in life generally. He brought me up to appreciate people and to appreciate general values: you know, be polite and always say thank you, always have a smile on your face, do not be rude – all those things. If I made a mistake in that sort of area, where I wasn’t polite, I was made aware of it. I’m easy to get on with. I’m just as normal as any other driver, or any other person. When I started karting, my dad did a kind of deal with me. He said that he would support me going racing, but only if I worked harder at school. I remember my dad had to work three jobs just to make ends meet and to keep his end of the bargain. During the day he worked for British Rail – as it was back then – as a computer manager, having risen through the ranks over 14 years from an admin clerk. When he arrived back home he would go straight out again and erect ‘For Sale’ sign boards in his suit for a local estate agent. I think he only used to get 50 pence a board but it all helped and every penny counted. In any other spare time, my dad used to knock on doors trying to book double-glazing appointments for his friend Terry Holland’s business. It was not a job he enjoyed but he still did it.

The first time I sat in a go-kart was when we all went on holiday to Ibiza. It was in August 1988, and I was three years old. I had not really been anywhere abroad before then for a summer holiday, so I remember it pretty well. Both my dad and Linda were working for British Rail and they were located at King’s Cross. I remember they were living in a small one-bedroom flat in Hatfield. We stayed in a mobile home camp in Ibiza and we travelled one way by plane and one way by train as this was all they could afford. The plane journey was something they saved up for, while the train tickets were part of a concession through working for the railway. A big group of us went on that holiday. The real highlight for me in Ibiza was the trip to the kart track.

They had little electric kiddie karts and the track was very small. It was less than a hundred metres long, probably only about sixty metres, but I loved it. I got in a kart and straightaway I knew I was going to enjoy it. I remember thinking I was Ayrton Senna, it just felt natural.

After that, nobody gave it a second thought. My dad was just a railway worker and I was just a kid. We went home and I thought that was it, but my dad remembered how much we had all enjoyed it, especially me. We thought nothing of it until a couple of years later.

For my fifth birthday I got my first remote control car. I remember them putting the batteries in this little car. I drove it up and down the hallway and tried it outside, too. I really liked it. I suppose that was the beginning, or at least the beginning of the beginning. I was consciously hooked on cars from that point.

A few months later my dad brought me an even bigger and better 1/12th scale electric remote control car and spent days building it up from all the bits in a box when he came home from work. I loved it. I was always pestering him to keep recharging the batteries. Eventually my dad thought enough’s enough, if we are going to muck around with this car then let’s do it properly and join a club. So we did just that. We went down to our local model shop Models in Motion, in the Old Town in Stevenage, and we joined the racing club and went remote control car racing every weekend on Sunday mornings. It was great fun for us both. There were like fifty adults racing and just two kids – and one of them was me. I found I was really competitive. My dad loved it and pretty soon he was helping me with everything. I guess that is when he became my first mechanic.

We used to go to the shop and get all kinds of new parts, and paint, and try to improve the car. We went racing at a village called Bennington with my electric remote control car packed in the back of Linda’s car – a white Mini Metro that cost my dad £100. In my first year I came second in the club championship, having beaten the adult who had been racing for years. They were a great bunch of people from what I remember and the camaraderie was brilliant. They didn’t mind me, a little kid, joining in their fun and beating them at it. It was through the hobby shop Models in Motion that I got my chance to go on BBC television’s Blue Peter. I was just six years old. At the end of my first season the club gave me a special award for the most impressive driver – so with this and ending up on television, what more could a kid ask for!

The next step came when we moved up from electric remote control cars to a 1/8th scale petrol-engined car called a Turbo Burns. I still have the car to this day. I remember it cost my dad a whopping £250 to buy second hand from someone at the track. I was still living in Peartree Way then, with my mum, but my dad and Linda had by that time moved to Shearwater Close in Stevenage where they bought a small three-bedroomed house with its own garden. It was our house. It was when Linda was expecting Nic, so they needed more space. Dad bought the house in Shearwater Close and let the flat in Hatfield. He couldn’t really afford to keep either but somehow he just managed because he had to. It meant we were now living in Stevenage closer to my mum and that was good for me. Nic was born the following year, in March 1992, and that summer, when I was seven, I went to Rye House at Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, for my first ride in a real go-kart on a real kart track. My dad took me for a day out following what we thought was a successful year in remote control car racing. We knew absolutely nothing about kart racing but we were just having fun. I went out on the little circuit at the back of Rye House – I mean the little one that no one else would dare go on – and I had a really good time. I got the bug for karting from that moment. That was it, that was all I ever wanted to do. It was wicked and my dad was now in trouble!

A few weeks later, there were some pretty strange goings-on in the shed at the back of our house. My dad used to sit most nights in the shed preparing my remote control cars, a job he had done for nearly eighteen months, when suddenly he built this extension to the shed from wood that he bought down the local DIY shop. The shed door used to be located on the side of the shed but now it was transformed into a pair of front double doors. I got my first go-kart that Christmas. I remember I was at my mum’s for the morning on that Christmas Day and then I went to my dad’s house. My mum was just dropping me off and my dad wasn’t in. I looked through the letter box and I could see down the hallway and onto the table. And there, I saw something really big in wrapping paper. I guess I ruined the surprise. I remember I was walking backwards into the house trying to act like I hadn’t even noticed this big monster of a present on the table! Eventually, I got to open it after my dad strung it out and pretended it wasn’t for me. You know what: they had given me the best gift that I’d ever had in my life up to that point.

They had also bought me a pale blue driving suit and matching race gloves, and a red FM helmet. I had the biggest smile ever on my face. We went out and I drove it on the street. We lived in a quiet close so it was okay, plus it was Christmas Day so why not? It turned out that this kart was a tenth-hand, rickety old thing when dad bought it, but he worked night and day to rebuild it in his purpose-built extended shed. He did everything to make it as good as new: completely re-sprayed it and polished everything that could be polished. That way, I would fit in with all the other kids whose parents could afford brand new presents. I was truly thrilled. I was buzzing. Of course, I wanted to try it out properly and, on my birthday two weeks later, we took it down to Rye House in the back of my dad’s Vauxhall Cavalier, with boot open, kart hanging out – what a sight we were – but we didn’t care; we were going karting. I had my first run on Saturday, 9 January, two days after my birthday. I was eight years old. And the rest is history!

Seriously, it was a real big thing in my life. It was when I started my karting career. I began racing at the then Hoddes-don Kart Racing Club, Rye House which was run by Alan Kilby and Harry Sowden. I raced in the Cadet Populars class as a novice and was instantly on the pace. If you are a new driver, you have to wear black plates for your first six races so that all the other drivers know you are a novice. Over a number of weekends, I brought home six first-place novice trophies from various circuits.

I was now ready and qualified to go on to yellow plates and start racing with the bigger, more experienced, drivers. I took part in my first ‘yellow plate’ race on 2 May 1993, I think at Clay Pigeon Kart Club down in Dorset, and I won against all the odds.

In my first year of cadet karting I was quite often quicker than some of the older and more experienced kids and occasionally if I overtook them on the circuit they would come up to me off the track and warn me off. It happened to my dad also, their dads would warn my dad off. I was already learning karate and so my dad decided to take it up as well, as we thought maybe this karting stuff is a bit more physical than we first thought. We both joined the local Stevenage Shotokan Karate Club run by Mike Nursey, a 6th Dan. I managed to get up to one grade short of intermediate black belt when I was ten. A lot of people have said I am black belt and I have not really corrected them as it has been easier to just say nothing. Although I was smaller for my age than most of my competitors, I was never scared to stand up for myself. My dad reached the same grade but we were away so much with karting that it was impossible to compete for our black belts.

We would go testing at Rye House occasionally during the week but mostly every weekend. My dad would always stand on the inside of the circuit at the hairpin. He watched to see where the best drivers were braking and he would go and stand there and say to me, ‘You’ve got to brake here, at least a metre later than the other competitors.’ Then, he would move a metre further and say, ‘You’ve got to brake here!’ So I had to brake later than the drivers who were braking late and doing well. And that’s how, and where, I learned how to brake late. I was pushing and pushing, and lots of the time I went off because it was just impossible to brake that late. And he would say, ‘No, you can do it, go on, you can do it.’ Eventually, it worked and I could brake later than any of my competitors and still keep the momentum in the kart. This was one of the keys to my success on the karting circuits.

I also had my first crash at Rye House on a practice day. I think it was Saturday, 30 January, the day before my first ‘black plate’ race day. It was getting close to the circuit closing time and we were just about to finish. We were on our last couple of runs and some dude came up on the inside of me and clipped me into the first corner. I didn’t even know he was there and he sent me off flat-out into the tyre wall. I went straight into the tyres – my kart was all bent and damaged and I had a bleeding nose. My dad charged up from the bottom end of the circuit fearing that I had hurt myself, but when he got to me the first thing I said was, ‘Can you fix it for tomorrow?’ I wasn’t bothered at all about me. I was just in a bit of a daze. My dad drove all the way to the other side of London to find the parts for my Allkart. Eventually he got the necessary parts from a nice man called Bruno Ferrari. Bruno used to tune race engines for Dan Wheldon and a few others at the time. Dan was then a huge karting star even though he was only about thirteen. Anyway, my dad got the parts and fixed my kart; we went racing the next day and I brought home my first trophy!

‘Fun on three wheels during a holiday…’

My first run in a kiddie-kart during a family holiday in Ibiza in August 1988, aged three.

An early photoshoot…

My brother Nic’s third birthday party.

Happy with another grade and certificate in karate.

My first kart, aged eight.

Preparing for my first race in my new kart and helmet.

Champions of the Future – a cadet race winner.

Me with Ron Dennis, at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1996.

Kart Masters – and another win!

Meeting Murray Walker at the Autosport Awards 1995.

Team MBM – alongside fellow racer Nico Rosberg in 2001.

Formula Renault with Nic in 2001.

Becoming 2000 Formula A European Champion.

Prince Charles came to the McLaren factory at Woking where we swapped a few tips on racing.

My dad has always been my manager and mentor – and also my chief mechanic when karts needed fixing.

You win some, you lose some – it can be a lonely place sometimes.

‘Meeting David Couthard at the McLaren Mercedes Young Driver Support Programme in 1998.’

Posing for the camera in the old McLaren trophy room.

Dreaming and hoping that one day…

Spending time playing pool with Nic.

Playing the guitar, and music in general, is one of my favourite ways of chilling out and relaxing.

Eventually I competed in events all over the country nearly every two weeks. I remember going up to Larkhall, in Scotland, and staying in this weird hotel where everything was painted black. It was a real scary Addams Family type of place! And there was a place called Rowrah up in the Lake District way up north, where it seemed to rain non-stop. But it was all good experience, travelling out into the middle of nowhere just to race karts. The whole family used to go along in my dad’s red Vauxhall Cavalier with a little old box trailer that danced around all over the place behind us. We stuck all the gear in this little box thing, then we put the go-kart on top of it, with all these different straps to stop the thing from flying away. And off we’d go.

When I was nine, I entered my first British Cadet Kart Championship. We had sold our old Allkart and bought a new bright green Zip Kart made by Martin Hines. Martin owned the company and was a very successful figure in the karting business and he ran a team called the Zip Young Guns. We couldn’t afford to be in the Zip Young Guns team and so remained independent but with advice, help and assistance from Martin.

Eventually, we bought a larger second-hand box trailer with a roller door on the back, which was a huge improvement. But then the poor old Cavalier had to drag this heavy trailer around all the time. I remember we would travel up to Larkhall in the wind and the rain, and when we arrived most of the other competitors had camper vans or caravans, while we had a box trailer. Linda would have to bring the microwave and kettle from the kitchen and sit in the back of the box trailer during the cold and windy days with Nic, then aged two, on her lap. That was hard on everyone but they did it for me and we thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

By this time, my dad had even got a Calor gas heater and put it at the back of the trailer. So Linda and Nic were in the back, jackets on, freezing cold, and then there was me and my dad, at the front of the trailer trying to prepare the kart. I remember Linda always brought a red flask along, full of chicken noodle soup.

After that weekend, my dad said ‘never again’ and somehow worked a few more jobs to buy a really old Bedford camper van that Linda named ‘Maureen’. Life started to get better. No more cold, damp soggy baps but instead we had toast in the mornings before a race – heaven!

It is hard for any family who have to find the money to race, particularly so in the case of my parents who just had normal day jobs. For those first three or four years, before we had backing from McLaren, it was probably a lot more of a strain for my family than it was for me, and especially for my dad. For me, it was just get in the camper, go to the racetrack, sign on, do my driver’s briefing and then go and race – and that felt natural. We didn’t always win; it was tough and I’d get grumpy like a spoilt kid. I just did not like to lose – and neither did my dad.

From these early days my dad has been my manager, with Linda in full support. It has really been a family team, Nic included. Occasionally our relationship has been strained by the pressures of motor racing but that is just normal. My dad has been the motivator and the strength that keeps us all going. To be father and manager can be tricky; it is not easy balancing both of those roles. Sometimes, I know I can be very cold and just treat him as a manager, but then I love him to bits for what he is and what he’s done for me – and he’s my dad! It’s not straightforward. You wake up and he’s the first, or second, person you see and so you’ve got that natural bond. Then you remember he is your manager too. But it works for us. And my dad, and my family, have made more sacrifices than you would believe.

I have proved him wrong at some points in my life, but, like I said, he is almost always right. Even though he is not the driver experiencing what I am experiencing, he is just as involved as me, if not more. He is just trying to do his best. It is a very strange relationship we have because he is so driven. He is so committed but never ever pushy. I said I wanted to race karts and he said, ‘Okay, if we are going to do it, then we are going to do it properly or not at all’ and that was it. It was either everything or nothing and that is still where I am today.

My step-mum, Linda, is fantastic. I was so young when my dad met Linda that I did not understand what had gone on between my parents. It tells you something about a person when they are prepared to take on the responsibility of looking after someone else’s kid: me. Ninety per cent of the people I know that have divorced parents and step-parents have a tough time because one does not like the other. Linda is Nic’s mum and what I love about her is the fact that she had Nic, her real son, but never ever treated us differently. My dad could not have picked a better step-mum for me. As I said earlier, Linda is the best step-mum in the world.

I honestly do not think I would be where I am today if my parents and step-parents had not worked hard together. With my brother, as we grow up, the bond is getting stronger and stronger. For me, it’s the most valuable thing I have in my life. My dad has been the main driving force for me. The way I am now is down to him. A lot of my friends did not have their fathers around and mine was there for me. So, respect to him for that. He has certain morals and there are a lot of important values that he has taught me. I know some people say he is overprotective, but he has always been committed to making sure that I maximize my opportunities to have a better life than he had. Dad is the one who started it all when I was just a boy. Without him, I do not think any of this would have happened at all.