Walk it like I talk it
At 27 years old, Nic Hamilton has gone from watching races from his wheelchair to competing at the pinnacle of British Motorsport. He talks to Glass about his unique journey so far, overcoming struggles, and what it means to be a groundbreaker
OVER the course of a 30-minute conversation with British Touring Car driver, Nic Hamilton, the statement “I was born into this” is made six times. That’s a lot. And bearing in mind that Hamilton’s father is a noted disciplinarian and his brother is Lewis Hamilton, you’d be forgiven for sympathising with a young man perhaps given little say in the direction of his own life. Your sympathy, though, would be misplaced, as would the assumption that it’s Hamilton’s family that made his progression to the peak of British racing inevitable. That path was mapped out when he was born two months premature with cerebral palsy, and was told as a child that he would never walk or talk. Another misplaced assumption. The disadvantages inherited at birth have instead instilled in Nic Hamilton a steely and undeniable drive to confound expectation. Knowing this, the recurring reference to Hamilton’s divine path takes on an entirely new meaning.
Nic Hamilton at the British Touring Car Championship media day. Photograph: Jakob Ebrey
“I was pretty much born into this, to be fair. My family came from nothing. I was born in a one-bed apartment in Stevenage, and my dad always wanted to do something with my brother, something to do on the weekends, and chose motorsport as an option … an expensive sport. I was always in my wheelchair going to races, every weekend around the UK. I always wanted to do it myself, but never thought I’d be able to, because of my condition,” he tells me.
Hamilton was wheelchair-bound as a child. He couldn’t walk long distances and struggled to walk generally. “I turned to a wheelchair to make life a bit easier, but became lazy in the process. I think I would use the chair as an excuse more than anything else. But I always loved motorsport. I knew I couldn’t drive, or I didn’t think I could, so I turned my attention to gaming instead.”
What followed was one of the many sequences in Nic Hamilton’s life that reads more like fiction than a genuine biography. “If it wasn’t for the gaming I wouldn’t have been able to turn the steering wheel for real. So it’s crazy how it’s all come around.” Hamilton was so good at racing videogames that he was headhunted to help develop a high-end racing simulator designed to train real life professional drivers. His knowledge and aptitude behind the wheel meant that before long he was out of the studio and onto the grid for real.
“My dad always said I should do something constructive, ‘read a book …’ and that I’d never get anywhere doing racing games all the time. I’d race Lewis a lot and he’d teach me how to use manual gears. I started using this £20 plastic steering wheel from PC World and just kept practising and practising, until, long story short, I became British number one in 2009. This got me an opportunity to work with a company developing Racing Sims. So I went from ‘gaming will get me nowhere’, to gaming landing me a job … and off the back of that I got the opportunity to race properly.” At a time when we are often told that virtual simulations promote, at the very least, laziness, and at most a total disregard for real world ambitions, Hamilton’s trajectory is a good indication of his disregard for dissenting voices.
Nic Hamilton at the British Touring Car Championship media day. Photograph: Jakob Ebrey
The next obvious question is, how can someone with a debilitating muscular condition affecting the bottom half of his body possibly compete in high level racing against able-bodied drivers? “The actual technical word for my condition is spastic diplegia, which affects my legs, from the hips down. My weaker side is weaker than most people’s weaker side, and I have no movement in my ankles – I can’t flex my toes, so all of my strength and power comes from my thigh muscles,” he explains.
“So, for me to drive a car we need a seat moulded to my body, to keep me firmly in place. I have scoliosis so I pop ribs if I move too much. Then we install these massive pedals meaning my legs are always bent, instead of straight – if your legs were straight you’d be using your toes to accelerate and break. Then we have a hand clutch on the steering wheel instead of a foot clutch, to minimise the amount of work put on my legs.”
One of the few things that simulators have over the real thing is the assurance that you won’t barrel roll on a corner or randomly burst into flames. Yet when Hamilton relives two such incidents, the frankly unnerving indifference in his voice makes me think that perhaps he doesn’t see the safety of simulation as an advantage at all.
“You’ve seen the videos, then? I’ve had a few moments … if you don’t have your moments you’re not going fast enough or trying hard enough! I’d never done go karting before and I was thrown into this championship, thrown into the deep end to learn how to swim. You always have hiccups – I ended up hitting a wall.” (Not a metaphorical wall – he would have broken through that – but a solid, literal wall.) “I went straight up in the air, flipped round and was knocked out on impact. It ruined my weekend.” There’s no smirk or grimace but a straight face when he tells me this, only sheer indifference.
“I’m never really worried about damaging myself, I’m thinking more about the money that it’ll cost to get the car back together. My mum worries, of course. She didn’t want me to race in the first place, but I can’t help what I love. She lets me live, which is great.” When it feels as if he’s about to soften, Hamilton continues: “I’ve had a car set on fire this year, which wasn’t planned. It just set alight – the whole left hand side during a test lap. I just had to get out of there and watch my whole year go up in smoke.” Again, not a metaphor. “But it’s all part of it, you just have to keep pushing and get back on the horse. Try not to make mistakes but know that you will crash again.”
It seems innately unjust for someone to overcome so much to get to where they are, just be hamstrung by something as comparatively trivial as financial backing. But as Hamilton said, “It’s an expensive sport,” and, contrary to popular belief, Nic Hamilton is 100 per cent independent. “Being a Hamilton is a double-edged sword; it can help you in some respects and hinder you in others. People expect that because of Lewis, his wealth and who he is, that he would be able to help me and make things easy for me. It can be hard to tell people the truth, but I’ve started to tell the story properly now, that I’m carving my own way. I can’t take away the fact that I’m super-proud of him but we’re two different people in terms of how we started. We come from the same place but we’ve each had different struggles.” Going it alone has meant “basically having to learn to be a CEO, a racing manager and a driver all in one.”
Nic Hamilton at the British Touring Car Championship media day. Photograph: Jakob Ebrey
When I ask Hamilton what he would be doing if, for some reason, racing cars was no longer an option (a stupid question in hindsight) he answers in typical Nic Hamilton style. “I don’t think anything could ever stop me from racing a car, even if I lost both my legs, both my arms, I’d find a way. Aside from that, maybe what I’m currently doing – public speaking: travelling around as a keynote inspirational speaker. I wouldn’t mind travelling the world doing that … But realistically the only thing that would stop me driving is death. So if I die, then yeah, otherwise …”
And mad as it sounds, I completely believe Hamilton when he says this. These aren’t inspirational soundbites but genuine pledges. He would, in all seriousness, find a way to drive with no arms and no legs, and be really good at it too. “I was born on the back foot, I’m used to making my back foot my front foot.” Once he becomes British Touring Cars Champion, Hamilton plans to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Again, I believe him instantly. On Groundbreakers, the theme of this issue of Glass Man, he comments, “Wow. I’d class that as breaking through barriers. I imagine someone punching a brick wall and breaking through it.”
For someone with such a fondness for using metaphors, Hamilton is an extremely literal guy. “Yeah pretty much.” He laughs. “I’m a really straight-to-the-point kind of guy. Some people struggle to understand it.”
It does take some getting used to, talking to someone with a tendency to slip into motivational speaker mode and a lexicon where streets are journeys and mission statements mountains. Our 21st century cynicism tells us that the inspirational metaphor is a language of its own which holds little tangible value; speaking in clichés – a tongue fit for faux philosophers and illusive politicians. People who say but rarely do. “I was told I wouldn’t walk or talk, now I’m sitting here as a British Touring Car Driver.” If that’s not talking the talk and walking the walk, I don’t know what is.
by Charlie Navin-Holder
All photographs: Jakob Ebrey