Two months ago I was in the United Kingdom, I was standing outside a warehouse, aware that as soon as I would walk through the doors, I would be a step closer to the dream seven year old me had after he went go karting for the first time. I was about to enter the base of a Formula 4 team!

When i took a step in, I could hear the power tools whirring as the mechanics prepped the car for my seat fit. It was the first time i got a proper look at the car and I instantly fell in love with it. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, so intricately designed with thousands of parts that would have to work together with laser like precision. While I had seen photos of the car before, the livery was one that I will not forget for a long time to come, the red layered with black and flecks of yellow transformed the car into a drop dead gorgeous machine. I was scheduled to start off with my seat fitting, almost every single seater car requires a mould of the driver’s body to be made, after some trimming that mould then turns into the comfiest seat ever thanks to it perfectly wrapping around your body, the mould is made by putting a plastic bag with a mixture of chemicals in the car, asking the driver to sit in their driving position and then an exothermic reaction takes place wherein the chemicals expand into a solid form around the drivers body. The process takes a good forty-five minutes and requires the driver to be as still as possible. After the seat was ready we went to the simulator room which is where I learnt the first track we were going to drive on, the simulator is used to give a jump start to your day of testing by helping you understand the bumps and corners and flow and feel of the track, ultimately letting you get a taste of what is to come. The simulator is made from the chassis of the car and has an ultra realistic feel with a mechanism that moves it when you drive across bumps or brake. The triple screen setup helps mimick the feeling of driving the car on the track and the force feedback from the wheels is in a class of its own

The first two days of testing were at Snetterton circuit, a track which is extremely tricky to drive on in the dry and one of the slipperiest in the wet, it being the end of November we were expecting cold temperatures on the first day with rain on the second so we knew we were going to have a tough job, especially since it was going to be my first time in the car. Before the first session we were going through onboards and data from similar conditions, trying to understand what is required from the track and what to expect.

Come first session, nerves and excitement running high as i prep myself to step into the car, balaclava first, then put a tear-off on the helmet, helmet goes on next, the Head And Neck Support goes on and then finally the gloves. At this point it starts sinking in, “I’m about to drive a formula 4 car”, I think to myself giddily. As i get strapped in I start thinking back to all the preparations that I had done over the past few weeks, all of those days in the gym, all of the simulator sessions, watching the onboards, everything amounted to what I would be doing over these two days at Snetterton, then we would be immediately switching focus to the next track; the legendary Silverstone circuit. I close my eyes and jus try to visualise what I want the next forty minutes to be like, as i open them my mechanic instructs me to start going through the procedure to start the car, the sound the 1.6 litre Abarth engine makes is one I will not forget for a long time, just thinking about it makes chills go down my spine, even through the helmet it sounded monstrous. I slowly release the clutch while applying a generous amount of power and the car leaps out of the garage. Under the helmet, I smile, that smile stayed on my face for the next hour. In that moment, driving that car, I felt like the happiest person on Earth