Nicolas Hamilton opens up about racing with a disability and following Lewis

The 23-year-old, who has cerebral palsy, is about to become the first disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championships and he believes his struggles have made him what he is now.

“I have cerebral palsy, so my condition isn’t really built for this kind of sport – it’s not built for doing 100mph, 150mph and going over kerbs,etc,” he told the BBC.

“For me it’s just working really hard in the gym, because breaking and accelerating is really tough on the legs.

“So when I first started training I could only push 20kg on the leg press, but now I’m up to 130kg.

“I was in a wheelchair for three or four years and you start to see that life is real tough. But then I started training for racing and that’s when my condition started improving because I had to train as an able-bodied individual to be able to even drive the car.

As for being the younger brother of the reigning Formula One world champion, he admits it hasn’t always been easy following in Lewis’s shadow, particularly when he’s given him a hard time as an older sibling.

“I looked up to Lewis like you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “He is the guy I wanted to be.

“He didn’t make my life easy – he was really tough on me. He put me through a lot of stress and strain as a big brother.

“My family didn’t wrap me up or make me any different to anyone else.

“There have been quite a lot of low points. Obviously being a Hamilton, a lot of people think I’ve got a lot of backing from the family and we’ve got millions of pounds, but for me I do it all on my own – I have my own management team that are looking after me and getting my sponsorship.

“For me it’s all about working for what you want and I’m just massively proud of myself and my team – it’s what we wanted to do and now I’m here, so you’ve just got to keep focused and push as hard as possible.”