The vibrations were becoming stronger. I could feel it all the way through my spine. My right foot was stretched out, pushing as far as it could. My eyes were focused into the distance, looking at a single precise spot. The fingers on my right hand reached out and flicked the lever.
The little car changed gear from second to third in less than the blink of an eye. I kept my right foot down hard against the accelerator pedal as the car increased speed. Again I flicked the lever, the moving up gears and continuing to accelerate. Moving the car to the left of the track with ever so slight movements of the steering wheel, I kept my eyes firmly on the spot where I wanted to turn into the approaching corner.
I could sense the braking markers at the side of the track rather than see them. I knew where I wanted to brake for the corner, and then I held my right foot down for a fraction of a second longer. Standing on the brakes, I moved forward hard against the racing harness as the car slowed. Easing off the brake I turned into the corner, the right front wheel brushing the corner kerb at the apex point.
By then I had my right foot mashed down against the accelerator pedal again, demanding all the power the little car could produce, going down the winding road towards the old hairpin. The car was feeling great, but I wasn't.
Normally a test day is great fun, a drivers dream. You have the whole track to yourself. You didn't have to worry about the cars behind you, or catching the cars in front. You could explore the limits of your car and try new things to go even faster.
Today though, early February in England, it was cold and miserable. And I wasn't enjoying myself as I used to.
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My name is Matthew Turner and I am a professional racing driver. I was 28 years old and I'm 5'8" tall, fit, not too muscular, with short dark hair and blue eyes. I had been living in England for the past 9 years for my racing. I moved over here when I was 19 after having a very successful season racing Formula Ford in Australia. I had finished second in the national championship and went to England to race in the prestigious Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch.
My performances there attracted the attention of a couple of teams, and I began my full time career racing for Van Diemen. I performed well and over the next couple of seasons I moved up through the various lower classes. All the time my aim was to get to Formula One.
By the time I was 25 I received a two season offer to race GP2, the class below Formula One. It was for one of the lesser teams, but I didn't care. I just wanted to show what I could do on the big stage. I was hoping to get noticed by the Formula One teams and possibly get a testing role with one of them.
Unfortunately the GP2 team I was in was not very good and the car I had was awful. The season was a litany of breakdowns, mechanical failures and lower placed finishes. At season's end the team folded and I was left out without a drive for the following season. I had begun the slippery slide back down the totem pole of racing.
For the first half of the new season I moved from one team to another, trying to find a permanent drive. The situation was not looking good. I had been so close to my dream, now I was further away than I had ever been. My personal life as well was a shambles. My girlfriend of a couple of years left me when my GP2 drive collapsed. Apparently being with a driver who didn't race all over Europe wasn't for her.
I eventually found a home in the British Formula 3 team of 'Big' Bill Windsor. He is one of the great characters of racing, a huge 'bear' of a man, with a heart of gold. He funded his team from the success of his various business interests. The cars he had were good, if not to the most current spec. But the team was a good solid operation. My half a season deal continued into the next season.
The second season (the first full season) with Windsor racing was successful and the team, as we finished 10 places higher in the championship than they had ever done before. I was feeling very good with the team and they seemed to value my driving and the work I did for them off the track. The team offered me a 1 year extension to my contract and I took it.
Feeling reasonably content with my season and my future, I went home to Australia for the first time in a couple of years.Coming home for an Australian summer was great. I had the best time catching up with friends and family. My sister Brooke, who is 4 years older than me, is a musician and she and her husband were starting to have success with their band. My parents were just retiring from their careers. Dad was a Lawyer, Mum an Accountant and they had acted as my 'management' in my career, negotiating contracts, sponsorships etc.
While seeing my friends over the break I was amazed at how much I had missed while I was living in England. They were all moving on with their lives; getting married, having kids, buying houses, moving up in their chosen careers. They all seemed to envy the fact that I was racing cars for a living, but it was me who was actually envying their lives. I envied that they seemed to have stability in their lives and I really admired how they were all 'growing up'.
The weather was beautiful, so warm and sunny. Being home brought out the best feelings for me. I actually felt like I was home. The thoughts of heading back to England didn't exactly please me. For the first time I wasn't very enthusiastic to be heading back.
Eventually I did have to go back to England and my home base in Milton Keynes. The long haul flight gave me plenty of time for contemplation. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was probably not going to reach my dream of Formula 1, but the thinking I did on the plane really confirmed it. I was now getting a bit too old, and was not moving closer to my dream. Even if I did win this year's British title, it would still be a huge task to get back to the levels where Formula 1 teams would consider me as a suitable candidate to race for them.
It was very cold and a bit miserable when I arrived back to my adopted home. It did seem to match my mood somewhat. I decided, if only to myself, that this would be my last year in the UK and that I would head home permanently after the season. I would get Dad to put some feelers out to Australian racing teams to see if there was any interest in my driving for them.
***********
So that is why I found myself charging around Donnington Park on a freezing cold Tuesday in early February, trying to make the little F3 car behave the way it should. We had been testing most of the morning, trying to iron out the bugs that always occur in new cars. I had managed to get some good consistent laps in after lunch and I was charging around when the crew signalled me to come in to the pits, so they could make a few more changes to the car.
I hopped out of the car and quickly discussed with the engineer the changes that we needed to make, before I ran into the relative warmth of the garage and put my big warm jacket on. One of the mechanics came past me and said my phone had been ringing constantly for the past half an hour. This surprised me as most of my friends knew I was testing and they didn't usually ring me at the track.
I picked up my phone and saw that my sister had been trying to ring me, 10 times in all. It was 2:45pm in England, so it would have been 12:45am in the morning back home. What could she want that was so urgent? I dialled her number and she answered after the first ring.
Brooke was absolutely distraught. She told me that Mum and Dad had been killed in a car accident a few hours earlier. They had been hit by a drunk driver on the way back home from a function and had been killed instantly. I went blank as I couldn't process the information. Tears were pouring down my face. I collapsed down to the ground. I had never experienced sadness like this in my life ever.
'Big' Bill came in and saw me in tears sitting on the ground. He came and sat down next to me and put his arm around me. When I finally got off the phone with Brooke I told him what had happened. He was shocked as well. He had met my parents the previous year when they visited me. He also knew them from the contract dealings, and when they did meet in person they all instantly hit it off.
He immediately got on the phone to his office and they organised a flight home for me the next day. Then he organised for the team to pack up for the day, as I was in no state to drive anymore, and he drove me back to my apartment in my car. I was feeling absolutely numb, operating on auto pilot.
I managed to pack my bags and spoke again with Brooke, letting her know that I was flying home the next day. She seemed so relieved that I was coming home as quickly as I was.
The flight home seemed to take forever, and I only just managed to keep myself together. But once I had gotten through Immigration and got my bags off the carousel, I found Brooke and her husband Simon waiting for me.
Tears started rolling down my face as soon as I saw my sister and she started crying too. Hugging each other tight helped. We all went back to their place and began the job of organising the funeral, and the future.
The funeral went off without a hitch and thankfully was more of a celebration than a morbid affair. Family and friends came from all over Australia and some from overseas. It was wonderful to see so many friends wanting to share their love for our parents, even under these terrible circumstances.
Brooke and I had been back to our childhood home, where Mum and Dad had been living. That was the toughest part of the whole process, walking back in and expecting them to be there, like they always had been. The place was a time capsule of what was happening before they died. Everything was just how they left it.
The old house felt good to be in after the initial sadness moved on. It was familiar, warm and still a happy place. I felt a real sense of calm there, like they were still looking after me. Even though I had been overseas I was still close to Mum and Dad, speaking to them and emailing them all the time.
A colleague of Dad's was their solicitor and he was the executor of their will. Brooke and I were to share everything. Mum and Dad had both worked hard on their businesses and had earned a very substantial amount of money when they sold them on their retirement. They also had multiple investment properties in Sydney and where they lived about an hour south of Sydney. Brooke and I had been extremely well looked after and in all reality didn't have to work again. But with Brooke being a musician and me racing, we really weren't 'working' anyway.
We decided to keep the investment properties (except one in Paddington in Sydney that Brooke and Simon decided to move into) and didn't really make any further decisions. It was all still a little raw at the moment.
I had been home for a couple of weeks, but I had to get back to England as the first race of the season was the following weekend. The goodbyes with Brooke and Simon as I headed to the airport were the hardest I had ever had to do, but we all knew I had commitments I had to keep.
