Billy, were you always positive, or was there a moment where, obviously, it was such a dark time for you, it must have been, but was it very quickly you went into the positive mindset you were going to do stuff, or was there a bit of time where you were feeling a bit low?

100%, you cannot have a situation that I had where you literally have lost both your legs at the age of 17 and come out of it and be like, great, okay, what's next? There was a period of time when I was in hospital where you don't know what life's going to look like, you don't know what you're going to be capable of.

Am I going to be able to live an independent life? Am I going to be reliant on other people for years and years to come? And that's all the sort of stuff that I talk about.

In the book, really, it's just about the challenge that I had to face through sort of no fault of my own, just the wrong place, wrong time situation in the race car, and then what that's led me on to do and actually how embracing challenges in my day-to-day life in other ways has led me to do some amazing things since then.

I suppose my question was a little clumsy because obviously you're gonna feel terrible because you've lost both your legs But is it your personality which did it or is it open to anyone to think is that what the book saying? It's open for anyone to grasp life and say let's do something

100% like that's life is not a sort of straightforward Situation like you have highs you have lows you have setbacks everyone in the world has got different forms of adversity.

Mine is obvious because you see me as a double amputee and you can go, oh, I can see the challenge that you have to go through on a day-to-day basis.

Effectively, I was inspired to write the book because my documentary that came out after my accident called Driven, which is on the BBC, which basically documented my recovery back to racing that year-long period after my accident when I just became a double amputee back in 2017, That documentary, a few years ago, I started getting messages on Instagram, on social media, from kids that were being shown it in schools in PSHE lessons to show them how to overcome adversity.

Mm.

And we'd always talked about going traveling together.

That had been something that since my accident had been sort of spoken about.

And then when everyone got ...

Well, they got in touch with me about Race Across the World, I'd never watched the show before.

I got asked to do it.

So I basically sat down at home with my sister.

But what would you like next to be? So that's different than what's next.

And was there any doubt in your own mind you'd go back into racing? I mean, because your dad got you into racing in the first place and he admits to blaming himself to some extent at this stage, but did you always want to get back in the car?

Yeah, I think, yeah, the conversation I had with my dad was quite early on after my accident.

And that was more from what I was told from my other family that were there at a time where they told them that my legs were going to have to be amputated and how my dad responded in a negative way to that and how it was a real shock for him and how, like you say, he felt an element of guilt in that moment.

But we had a conversation quite quickly early on that kind of you know i kind of said effectively you got me into the sport but i've been doing it for 11 years not because you've been a parent a pushy parent that's been forcing me to continue to race because you love racing too i've wanted to do this because i fell in love with this sport and i wouldn't have had it any other way the fact that i've had some amazing memories and stuff like that so we had that conversation me and my dad early on which i think was important for for him to kind of take away that that guilt from him because i didn't want him to feel that um And then it quite quickly moved on to the conversations that I was having whilst in hospital.

Friends, family, mechanics, engineers, people from the motorsport community that were coming to see me in hospital for those five weeks.

Naturally, if you put those people in a room together, people that love motorsport, you're going to talk about racing.

And quite quickly...

I mean, how dreadful was it? How hard? Which was the hardest bit of the try to do with your condition?

So what is on the horizon now?

Yeah, I think for me, like I say, that, uh, the Ironman challenge, it brought that competitive side out in me.

It, it sort of re-unlocked that sports person that I've always been and the fact that I've always been into sport and wanted to win and be the best.

And my trainers after the Ironman basically started talking to me about, you know, maybe you should consider training towards the next Paralympics in triathlon.

It's obviously a sport that having now broken a world record and you've shown that over the long distance stuff, you're capable of swimming, cycling, and running to a really high level.

Whether that translates to the sprint distance triathlon, which is what, um, the distances are for the Paralympics, you're talking it's a 5K run instead of a marathon.

Everything is a lot shorter, but it also means that it's, again, it's, it's more about competition, 'cause the Ironman, a lot of it is just about surviving.

How soon after that race, um, do you think, "I, I'm gonna be able to race, but maybe I'm not gonna get to quite the stage I want to get to, but maybe it's time to do something else"?

Who put in on that for you?

Yeah, I think Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, I think there were a few other drivers that kind of stayed anonymous in their donations, but people that I'd never met before were donating money towards me.

I'd never met at that point Jenson Button.

I very, very briefly met Lewis Hamilton as a young kid and got a picture of him, but he would have had no clue who I was or that I was that kid that he'd had a photo with all those years ago.

So, like...

It was just really bizarre in that sense that I just couldn't quite believe the outpouring of support from people that I'd never met.

But, you know, that community, the whole racing community really came around me in that moment.

sounds great though what a great what a great set of experiences and your dad obviously was you know a racing nut he I think he bought you your first car at the age of two which obviously you couldn't drive but you started racing at the age of six and it sounds like Correct me if I'm wrong, it was the glue in your relationship, your shared passion for all things motorsport.

For people who don't know, should we just recap on the last 10 years of your life?

Yeah, effectively, my life changed massively when I had a racing crash and became a double amputee as a result of that crash.

That was when I was 17 years old.

Not long after my accident, I went back to racing and we made a documentary sort of covering that journey of learning to walk again, learning to drive a racing car again.

And as a result of that documentary sort of going out into the world, it obviously got an amazing reception, which I was really grateful for.

But some of the sort of quirks of the documentary coming out that maybe I didn't expect was to start getting messages like five, ten years later.

from kids at schools that were being shown the documentary in like PSHE lessons about resilience and stuff like that.

we like but anyway i didn't say that out loud obviously but that's what i was thinking all right so cool man it's so cool um what are the headlines you want to get across uh to people listening to to get them to buy the book

How did you get onto the grid to present for the first time in a pundit role? What was the phone call for that and when was it?

Yeah, it was a bit of a random sort of call up, to be honest, because...

It came from a producer who worked in Formula One, basically watching me on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year back in 2018.

So I won the Helen Rollison Award.

I had to go up and do a speech.

It was like a live show in front of thousands of people.

And I delivered half my speech and I took a pause and took too long of a pause and got cut off.

Can you take us through the last thing that you potentially remember to then get the next memory?

What does it look like for those that don't know?

Yeah, so it's a 750-meter swim, which is the equivalent of, I believe, 30 lengths of a swimming pool.

And then it's a 20K bike ride and a 5K run.

But it's much shorter distances than the Ironman, but you can't cheat the fitness and the speed that you need.

With an Ironman, basically, it's more of a game of survival.

You can just basically have...

You need serious fitness, don't get me wrong, but if you can just keep going and you just have that...

I guess it's what messages would you share to people that are going through difficult spots with that, whether that is meant mentally or physically or both, like what have you learned about resilience? I guess.

shows your focus on racing though, isn't it? You really like racing.

Yeah, I didn't want it to take away from my career and distract me, but they were like, as much as, you know, potentially it is a bit more to juggle, there is also a lot of opportunity that comes with being in the paddock, Formula One paddock, with the big bosses that make all these big decisions.

Exactly.

Yeah, that for me was the big switch in mindset with it, because a half-toe initially saying no, and my friends and family basically saying like, take a bit of time to actually think about this, Next thing you know, I sort of thought about it, thought, okay, actually being in the paddock with the boss of Mercedes, the boss of Ferrari, being able to speak to the drivers, the team bosses, that actually puts me in there puts me in their sight and makes me sort of a talking point on their mind.

And when I was still trying to progress my career, I thought that was something that would be beneficial.

So to be honest, it was quite a weird introduction into that world because like I say, it wasn't like a passion of mine at the time.

Formula One was a passion, but being on camera wasn't something that I was like really desperate to be.

Having been within that sport for a long period of time, obviously you're still really young and you're clearly very fit, but what has the driving force been to kind of go into a new competitive sporting environment, I guess?

Could you talk us through what was happening in the moments before? Did you realise the car was kind of ahead of you? How did it take place?

Yeah, so it was the last race of the weekend at Donington Park.

First race of the weekend, I'd been on the podium, overall podium that is, and won the Challenge Cup again.

The second race, I had a mechanical failure, so DNF.

So I kind of probably had the bit between my teeth that I knew that I needed a strong result to sort of, you know, sort of claw back some points in the championship that weekend.

I believe I was starting like fifth or sixth on the grid.

And like I say, it was any other race apart from the fact that when we were lining up on the grid, we were on slick tyres and it started to drizzle with rain.

So how does that work? What does it look like?

Are you ever afraid of your own intensity? Did you ever think, I need to dial this back a step?

Um, I think, like I said, when I was younger, I was quite a shy kid when I first started racing and motorsport and competition and finding something that I was really good at and sort of excelled at really built my character and turned me into the person that I am today.

Because I never really, before I got into racing and started winning British championships, I never really, when I was playing football at a young age or other sports, I never really had that thing that I felt like I could really excel at and that just allowed me to grow my confidence.

That's what motorsport became for me.

It really helped me come out of my comfort zone and grow as a person.

And I just think that it's nothing to shy away from.

Life is a challenge.

Have you found any peace with satisfaction Or is that something you even seem like a dangerous concept?