From Gran Turismo video game to Le Mans, a Hong Kong boy racer’s story

I was born and raised in Hong Kong, in Sha Tin. I went to a really good secondary school, Diocesan Boys’ School. My dad was a salesman and my mum helped out with my grandfather’s trading company. I’d always played racing games, learning the fundamentals. In 1997, when I was five or six, the first Gran Turismo computer game came out. We only had Need for Speed before that, set on wide open US roads. Now you were on a circuit – and you actually had to brake.

Driving School There’s really no way to get into racing in Hong Kong: you have to be a second-generation racing car driver. The whole racing thing started for me when I finally got my driver’s licence at 19, when I went to the US for college at San José State University. I started studying engineering and, because of racing, I changed to psychology, because it’s less work. I still haven’t finished, because racing has taken up so much time. The prices to go to a race school were a couple of grand a weekend, US. I couldn’t afford that.

So I started marshalling at the race tracks in San Francisco, and being a pit lane fireman. I wanted to dip my foot into it, to see if there was a way I could get through cheaply. I was the pit refueller and also the crew chief for a team on an endurance race, the 25 Hours of Thunderhill, and so in 2012 they rented the car to me for a really low rate for drivers’ school.

In the hot seat My parents were OK with it as long as they didn’t have to pay. I was able to fund the whole thing by eating cup noodles every lunch and dinner. Nowadays, they are really supportive, because they have seen me progres­sing and getting asked to race. It was way more difficult than I’d thought. You’re in a super-hot three-layer Nomex suit. It’s hard to breathe because you have a head sock, a helmet, and you’re strapped in really tight. You’re suffocating in the car. It’s not the most pleasant feeling, but you get used to it.