Formula 3

‘IT’S THE MOST UNDIVERSE SPORT IN THE WORLD.’ MEET ENAAM AHMED, THE UP-AND-COMING MUSLIM DRIVER WHO BROKE AYRTON SENNA’S F3 RECORD!

Spend a day at a grand-prix racetrack for the first time and it is the noise that stays with you the most, the thumping thunderclap of engines that does not so much fill your ears as shake your whole being. So,the first time that Enaam Ahmed stepped in to take the wheel of a motorised go-kart, the early signs did not suggest that he was setting out on a journey towards the higher levels of the sport. “I liked the driving, but I absolutely hated the noise,” he said. “I used to cry at the noise the first couple of times I jumped in.”

He was aged nine at the time, the track was Rye House in Hertfordshire — where Lewis Hamilton had cut his teeth a few years earlier — and it did not take long for Ahmed’s ears to become attuned. Within three years, he had won the British Championship and two years further along the track, in 2014, he became world karting champion. That same year, Hamilton won his second Formula One world championship and his first with Mercedes, sparking the run of five titles in six years that has taken him within one of Michael Schumacher’s record tally of seven.

Now, at the age of 20, Ahmed is about to embark on a season of Formula 3 racing that he hopes will propel him further towards his goal of competing in Formula One. It begins in a fortnight at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, the same time and place as Hamilton begins his pursuit of a seventh title.

Even at such an early stage in his career, Ahmed, from west London, has already experienced the turbulence that can afflict aspiring racing drivers, especially those from less affluent backgrounds, so he is well aware of the resilience that Hamilton has needed to reach his present position. “He had a few tough years and it was great to see how he came through that,” Ahmed said. “He inspired me a lot.”

Ahmed has required some resilience of his own in recent months, having contracted coronavirus shortly before he was due to fly out to the opening race of the season in Bahrain in March. The race was cancelled, but the British driver would have been in no fit state to drive. “From that first week with the virus, I don’t even remember what happened,” he said. “My mum said I could barely open my eyes. I was shivering all the time, I wasn’t eating or drinking. I was finished for a month.”

That lack of peace stemmed from a period in which the vagaries of a career in motorsport had become abundantly clear. After bursting on to the scene with his karting success, he took Formula 3 by storm, his haul of 13 race wins in the 2017 British F3 Championship breaking the record set by a certain Ayrton Senna. The following year, he stepped up to the European F3 circuit and two early-season wins had Formula One teams sitting up and taking notice.

But his fortunes tailed away as the season wore on and the F1 interest faded, too. “That was the year I almost tasted F1,” he said. “I got approached by a very good F1 team, I was maybe going to get a chance on their driver programme, but I didn’t end the year very well and it was a case of ‘maybe next time, kid’. After losing that opportunity, I was a bit depressed for a while.”

To make matters worse, he was then unable to compete on the European F3 circuit again last year when the investment he needed to take part fell by the wayside. Suddenly, from feeling as though he was approaching to the pinnacle of his sport, he was now struggling to cling on. “It was a very hard time in my life,” he said. “People have a lot worse situations, I know, but I’d been racing almost my whole life, I’d pretty much given up on my schooling, I didn’t have much to fall back on.”

A late and unexpected opportunity to drive on the Japanese F3 circuit saved his season and he seized the opportunity to finish third in the championship. Now he has been reunited with the Carlin team, with whom he had driven in F3, and will take to the grid in their colours in Austria next month. Still, the experience of abruptly finding himself without funding, just as his career had been taking off, was a reminder of the difficulties faced by competitors from lower-income backgrounds.

Ahmed was raised in west London, the son of Shami, his father, of Pakistani descent, and his mother, Samina, an Indian Kenyan, both of whom had moved to the UK as children, and he has twin sisters, aged nine. “It’s one of the most expensive sports and my family have sacrificed everything,” he said. “My sisters, their lives have been sacrificed a bit for me to do the job.

“My parents never once told me to stop. Even when it was not possible [financially] to go racing, they did whatever they could. My mum doesn’t have a wedding ring, she sold it. There have been things like that. I use that now as a strong driving force to do well.”

It is struggles like this that Hamilton has been seeking to address in recent weeks. He has spoken of the racism he has experienced in the sport and, on Sunday, announced the launch of The Hamilton Commission, aimed at attracting young people from a broader range of backgrounds to the sport. As the only BAME driver in Formula 3, and one of few in the higher levels of motorsport, Ahmed is firmly supportive of Hamilton’s campaign.

“It’s probably the most undiverse sport in the world,” Ahmed said. “Apart from Lewis, there’s Jehan Daruvala [the F2 driver from India], Alex Albon [the Thai-British driver for Red Bull] and me. Other than that, there’s no one else of any other ethnicity that I’ve seen. I look back now and think, ‘Maybe that happened because there was a bit of prejudice.’ I haven’t experienced racism as badly as Lewis but I’ve been the only coloured guy in the whole paddock.”

Ahmed believes that the determination shown by Hamilton to reach the peak of his sport has been driven by the difficulties he has experienced en route. “Lewis is three gears above every other driver,” Ahmed said. “He’s more hungry, he’s faced more adversity, he’s had to fight a million times harder and he won’t be beaten until he retires. That’s why he wins so often. He never forgets where he came from and never forgets what he experienced.”

The sport as a whole, he feels, would benefit from greater diversity. “It’s a bit boring, because there are no real personalities,” Ahmed said. “Lewis is so different and everyone outside motorsport knows who he is. Other than him, it’s a bit bland and I think it’s to do with how undiverse the sport is. No one knows who Nico Hülkenberg is outside motorsport. Pretty much every other sport is diverse now, but we’re 30 years behind. It makes me angry. But that just makes me want to drive faster.”

Back in his F3 seat this season, Ahmed is determined to re-establish himself as a coming force. When his rivals hear a crescendo behind them and check their wing mirrors, they will see Ahmed approaching, increasingly comfortable with being a growing noise in his sport. “I can see the path to F1 in front of me,” he said. “I’m going to do my best to get there and liven things up.