Motorsport fan and journalist for Autosport & Motorsport News, Jack Benyon, gives us his view on the team, on sharing their story, and the power of racing.
As a journalist,
there’s always pressure to remain professional and unbiased, and to stay true
to merely reporting the news, and not your opinion on it.
Blogs like this give
me the rare chance to share my thoughts, and those are of absolute admiration for
Andy, Tony, Jimmy and Warren who have suffered through events the likes of
which mere mortals will never really understand.
The lads would have
you believe otherwise; I interviewed the four of them for a feature in
Autosport in February, and each one appeared as normal as any other person I
speak to on the phone. The one common factor of the people I talk to, working
for a motorsport specialist publication, is that they love racing.
But this is something different. This is a bunch of men using racing as a rehabilitation tool. Despite their heroic bravery in defending our country and our freedom, they in turn are normal human beings with families, bills and real-world problems.
And the chance to
rehabilitate through racing has been a big thing for them, as they will all
attest to.
The fact that Team
BRIT is opening its doors to all members of society with a disability of any
kind, means the joy that motorsport can bring will be felt by others.
We all get lost in the seriousness of top-level motorsport. When Lewis Hamilton doesn’t win on a Sunday, it’s the end of the world for his fans.
But it’s a profession,
in the same way that the lads in Team BRIT were doing their job when they were
attacked by gunfire or stumbled across a minefield. And their lives really did
change on a Sunday.
What can be shared is
the pure joy of motorsport that is sometimes lost when you reach the upper
echelons. When Lewis Hamilton first stepped into a kart, he experienced the
pure joy or driving, and trying to do it better than everybody else. The
feeling of standing atop the podium knowing you’re the best, or packing your
kart into the trailer knowing that you gave your all out there and that you can
be proud.
Through that same pure
joy, I hope that many more people, servicemen and women or otherwise, use that exhilaration
to help come to terms with their injuries, and find something that makes them
whole again.
I look forward to charting the progress of the new and existing members of Team BRIT through our publication, and look forward to hearing more of the views and opinions of fellow Team BRIT bloggers and readers.
Jack Benyon
Twitter: @jackbenyon
Instagram: @jackbenyon
Email:
jack.benyon@motorsport.com
www.autosport .com
www.motorsport-news.co.uk
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