SETTING HIS SIGHTS ON THE 24 HOURS OF LE MANS ENDURANCE SPORTS CAR RACE IN 2024, Team BRIT founder and CEO Dave Player explains: “If you’re a mountain climber, you want to climb Everest eventually and if you’re an endurance racer, you dream of competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours. It’s a legendary, historic event that every racing driver sets their sights on.”
IF THE TEAM GETS TO compete in what is widely judged to be the world’s most gruelling endurance race, they'll also enter the history books as the first all-disabled squad to do so. It’s something they have to work up to, with all the drivers needing the requisite experience and suitable cars, hence the two-year time frame.
Other disabled drivers have taken part, but only through a wild card, non-competitive scheme.
“We don’t want that,” Dave, 54, insists. “We want to compete on a level playing field, as a statement that even as disabled racing drivers we belong on a world stage. We want to earn our place, not have it given to us.”
A wheelchair user since he dove into a lake and broke his neck at 23, Dave set up the charity KartForce in 2010 as a way for injured veterans to use karting for rehabilitation and recovery, then founded Team BRIT in 2015—creating a set of hand controls that could be installed in racing cars to enable drivers with disabilities to compete side by side with able-bodied contestants.
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