to be in. We chose Junior Yamaha because we thought it was a better career path than Junior TKM, the rival series. People would say we were avoiding TKM because it had fiercer competition but we knew where we were headed and what we wanted to learn from our racing and it wasn’t to be found in Junior TKM, although it was also a great series.
That year I won both the McLaren Mercedes Junior Yamaha Champion of the Future series and the British Super One Junior Yamaha Kart Championship with a round to spare. That was also the year when I was invited, by Ron Dennis, to go to Belgium, to the Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps as part of the prize for winning the championship.
In 1998, I was invited to be a part of the McLaren Mercedes Young Driver Support Programme. This was a golden opportunity to be supported by a major Formula One team and car manufacturer. My dad was delighted. As I have said, we were not exactly rolling in cash and, although we were getting by, the McLaren contract certainly provided us with the financial comfort that all young budding racing drivers desired.
I also raced in Europe for the first time, helped by the recommendation of Martin Hines to the Italian Top Kart manufacturer and racing team. I had my first European race in Belgium and it was not a great race, but it was just good showing up. I impressed the people from Top Kart and we got another chance to race for them, in Italy. I did my first race in Parma and in the same race was this kid called Nico Rosberg, now a Formula One driver with Williams. I remember we had this awesome race where I was behind him, both of us miles in front of the other guys. I just sat on his tail the whole race, played it cool, and then on the last lap I overtook him on a straight and won the race. That was the day Nico’s father, Keke Rosberg, the 1982 Formula One World Champion, came up to me and said, ‘That was an awesome race, well done’ and that’s when my relationship with Nico started. From then on, we became best friends, hanging around with each other all the time throughout our teenage karting years.
A few months later we went to Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix. Keke, Nico and I sat down with Ron Dennis. He said to us, ‘I’m planning to put together a team. Are you two going to be able to stay friends if we have this team and you’re competing against each other?’ We said ‘Yes’ without hesitation and Keke created our own kart team called Team MBM. We never really found out what the MBM stood for but I assumed it meant Mercedes-Benz McLaren. We raced together in 2000 and had a fantastic year winning nearly every major race in our class. That was one of the most amazing years of my career: I won the European Championship and the World Cup in Japan. I especially remember one weekend, in the European Championship, at a place called Val d’Argenton in France, for very special reasons.
The week before, I had fallen off my bike and hurt my wrist. I tried to hide the swelling because I was really worried about what my dad would say but the pain was so bad I eventually had to tell him what had happened. My dad called Ron Dennis and asked for his help. Ron called the then Formula One doctor Professor Sid Watkins and a friend who put my wrist in a special cast. So, we travelled over to France and took part in the race weekend. I won my first two heats, then suddenly someone complained to the Clerk of the Course about my plaster cast. The next thing I knew, I was excluded from the event. Naturally, with the European Championship at stake, my dad pleaded with whoever would listen but eventually he contacted Ron to explain what had happened. Ron was actually at the Austrian Grand Prix but he spoke with a Senior Member of the FIA who intervened and I was reinstated. I missed one of my heats and therefore started lower on the grid for the first final but still managed to win both feature races, the second one ahead of Robert Kubica, who is now racing for BMW in Formula One.
I had a bad year in karts in 2001 when Nico and I thought we would move up to the final karting class – Formula Super A as it was then – and try to win the championship. It didn’t go well at all. We were developing our own chassis with Dino Cheisa our Team MBM manager and it was tough but it was something we wanted to do for Dino and his team. It was a good learning experience.
At the end of the year we went to single-seaters. McLaren arranged for me to have a test with Manor Motorsport in their Formula Renault car. It was always going to be tricky, never having been in a racing car before, and I crashed after about three laps, taking out the right rear corner of the car. It did not put them off too much though, and after they fixed the car I got straight back in and did okay. I started my first year of the British Formula Renault series in 2001 with Manor Motorsport. Moving on from my fantastic years in karting to single-seater racing was something I had been looking forward to for some time. I had my first race at Donington Park in November. I had qualified fifth. I remember all these cars shooting past me at the start. It was like I had never raced before – well, I hadn’t in cars. I couldn’t believe just how different it was in cars as opposed to karts. In karting I was a king, but now in single-seaters I was back to basics. It was so aggressive on that first lap it was unreal, and I was like, ‘Shoot, I’m going to have to pull my finger out!’ It was not like karting, where you could just roll around the paddock and have some fun, get in the kart and drive. You had to be there paying attention to all the data, working with the engineers and all that stuff.
In 2002 I had quite tough times through the Formula Renault days and there were moments when I would come home and my dad was on at me for one thing or another. I was having problems keeping up at school, I was struggling. Actually, there was a point where I asked myself, ‘Am I going to be able to do this?’ I remember sitting with my dad in the car, telling him that I wanted to stop. My dad is very emotional about my racing and, being peed off, he just said, ‘Yeah, okay, we’ll just stop.’ He didn’t really mean it, but I was doubting myself, not feeling that I was the man at all. But things changed: from that low point in my life I got myself together, won some races and then came third in my first full year of Formula Renault.
The next year, 2003, I had a slow start before something just clicked, and then I just blew everyone away. I won ten races out of fifteen that season. I came second in two of them and third in one and because I had won the championship, I did not have to race the last two races. It was such a great year with Manor Motorsport’s Formula Renault team that I decided I wanted to stay with Manor and move up into the British Formula Three series with them for a couple of end of season races. From the first time in the car I was quick and setting the pace but I had much to learn. Although my pace was good the races didn’t quite finish as I expected. I had a huge shunt at Brands Hatch where I had the misfortune of being involved in someone else’s accident but, that aside, I had a fantastic time.
For 2004, the team decided to move from the British Formula Three series to the Formula Three Euroseries with me as their driver. I did okay but it was the absolutely worst year of my racing career both because of the car and my relationship with the team. It was obviously difficult for the team as it was their first year in the championship and neither they nor I had ever raced on most of the European circuits before. It was a huge learning curve for us all, but I did feel that I was the one being blamed for poor results. It did cause quite a lot of tension between the team, me and my dad. In what I felt were very challenging circumstances, I won one race and finished fifth overall. This was a very frustrating period. Towards the end of that year, I had a really, really difficult time when we fell out of contract with McLaren. We were unhappy about the year we had just had and this was part of the reason that we had a disagreement over where I should race in 2005. I wanted to move on but McLaren recommended that I stay another year in Formula Three with Manor. This was not what I wanted. I had given it much thought over the previous few months and had also discussed it with my family and I eventually decided that I was prepared to give up my contract with McLaren rather than stay for another year. McLaren couldn’t see it at the time and told me to go away at the end of 2004 and analyse my next move.
I had been at Manor Motorsport for three years and thought it was a good time to move on. I wanted to go some where else and learn from other people. I thought I could do that in GP2. McLaren disagreed. So we came out of contract.
My last two races of 2004 were to be in Macau and Bahrain and, as I was now without McLaren, I had to find my own sponsorship money to get there. I was going through a tough time with everything in my life. The team I had always wanted to be a part of had cancelled my contract because of a disagreement about the next step in my career. My dad and I then set about finding sponsorship money. My girlfriend at the time, Jodia, said, ‘Hey,