anything he'd fancy doing he had to go at it I was almost sure we could get him
to be a champion in the go-kart so we tied his feet to the pedal because he
couldn't because he couldn't keep his feet on the pedal so he tied his feet
to the pedal of this go-kart I don't think you'd actually learn how to break or
accelerate a gym I go one way you know accelerating down one end of the car
park and next thing you know he's hit this curve at the end of the car park and
the go-karts picked up and gone round and disappeared down a ravine and then
after that my parents pretty much said yeah no racing for you and I think my
mom just wanted to look after her disabled son and do something else
when I got the opportunity to work for project cars it was very minimal they
said we just want you on board what you can give us is fantastic your name the
fact that you raised the fact that you're great with sim gaming they said you
know just just drive the game a couple of times write some reports and just
send it to us and I was like yeah okay well that's great but you know this is
an opportunity that I've never had before and I've always wanted to be a
part of a game and put my thoughts and aspirations into a game I followed my
brother Lewis for my whole life and I think it was just a natural thing for
me to to want to be able to race but I thought it would be practically impossible
for me to to be able to drive you know because I was struggling to to even
walk with my condition I was born two months premature I've been diagnosed
cerebral palsy and cerebral palsy is basically a condition affected by the
brain the thing is the right side of my brain is it's partially damaged which
affects my lower legs and the right side of my body cerebral palsy is all
about tight muscles the constant battle with it so there's a lot of things I
have to work on which is that the physiotherapy also keeping on top of the
strength when I was about 15 I got this sad demo through the door I took it
upstairs and that was my first sort of experience in a simulation game and I
got a steering wheel and some pedals and I thought if I can't have a career in
real life then why can't I have one online and in the virtual world I entered
the British Championship in 2009 and won the British Championship using buttons
it's sort of just cited the whole idea of you know if I get the opportunity to
get in a race car maybe I'll be able to do it for real
I pasted my dad for for weeks and weeks and said can I can I get in a race car
and he thought you know okay well I'll give him a little shot I went to this
driving school which is owned by Jonathan Palmer within half a day I was a
second faster than the instructor straight away yeah I came last I couldn't
catch him all this it's impressive to watch Nick drive us being Hamilton's
we're pretty much all or nothing so we went into the Cleo Cup which is a step
down from British touring cars and it's the hardest or the toughest one make
a series in the UK within four months I went from a sim gamer to having my first
opportunity to race a race car
Slightly Merge Studios is a very unique company everybody that's a part of the
game and works on it is is passionate about it it's all driven by passion in
my job is to take all of the cars in the game and develop them in terms of
handling and physics because I have that ability to mix between sim gaming and
real life Nick did a lot of simulation racing himself a lot of it in fact he
was a simulation series champion he has a good understanding of the nuances that
we need to nail in order for a simulation to feel authentic to get the tire
model right having real-life drivers is critical Nicholas is fantastic at picking
up the smallest changes AJ might say to me Nick we need you to test X tires and
you know give the feedback so I've got to basically put myself in this program
and then come back with with the feedback that they need from it Nicholas
happens to talk very similar to the way I talk about racing it's a little bit
like a real-life driver-engineer relationship every car that is in the
game is basically hand-built it's completely different to any other car
that you drive within the game
I've driven a lot of the circuits that are in the game so all the attention to
detail just like the blades of grass and the bumps are in the circuit all these
sort of things I wanted to really knuckle down on to make sure that the game
was as strong as we could get it
try and do the best job I can for them because it's something that I'm very very
passionate about and something that as I said never thought I'd I'd be in the
position to do if it wasn't for simgaming I wouldn't be where I am
if I didn't have that desire to want to play a game it wouldn't have put me in
this position so my mindset wouldn't have been in the way it is now so really
it stemmed from the whole simgaming world which I've only actually realized
now talking to you because otherwise I'd have just been in a wheelchair and I
don't know where I'd have been I don't know what I'd have been doing yeah so
it's pretty pretty crazy
