Speed of Sight charity host a track day, inviting people who are visually impaired or have disabilities, who otherwise wouldn't be able to get behind the wheel, drive at Three Sister Race Circuit, Ashton-in-Makerfield, We meet the founder of the charity Mike Newman and also Ben Felten, the world's fastest blind man on a motorcycle, visiting from Australia.
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00:00 Hi there, my name is Mike Newman. I'm the CEO of Speed of Sight and we're at Three Sisters in Wigan
00:05 delivering our track day experiences for people who are living with substantial difficulties.
00:11 And what can people do today? They can drive a track car on a race track, working with our
00:16 instructors who are specially trained and able to get the maximum enjoyment and fun out of the time
00:22 they're in the car.
00:32 Well my name is Ben Felton. I'm from Blind Speed which is my team. It's based in Sydney, Australia.
00:51 My claim to fame is that I have set the new motorcycle blind land speed record on the 18th
01:00 of March 2018. I achieved a top speed, well an average two-way speed of 272 kilometers per hour
01:07 or basically 170 miles per hour, yeah, on a 1000cc Kawasaki ZX10R. And the way I do that
01:16 is I ride and I have a former MotoGP racer Kevin McGee on another motorcycle behind me
01:22 and my Paul Simpson, my radio communications technician, we use analog radio and Kevin has a
01:29 microphone, I have earplugs and when we're riding our bikes racing down the salt flats,
01:36 Kevin's giving me verbal commands, go go go left, right, yeah. So in fact I'm the first blind person
01:43 to compete in open class competition. So I compete at the moment in the 1000cc production class
01:49 and I compete against fully sighted guys. But ours, it's not like a race track, it's a
01:55 time trial, yeah, so one person goes at a time. Yeah, so that's what I do. I also do track days
02:02 for people with a disability back in Australia and one of the things I wanted to do is
02:08 obviously come and meet the legendary Mike Newman, my mentor, and I've been trying to meet
02:17 Mike for a very long time and to coincide with a track day and his new cars, it was just an
02:24 opportunity that we couldn't miss. It was a fantastic experience and the thing, me being
02:28 totally blind and having no sight at all, to jump in the car with Ralph and to do laps around this
02:33 track at the speeds that we're doing, it was a really empowering experience. So it really felt
02:41 like I was in control of the vehicle. It's thrilling out there to have the wind in your face and
02:46 you know, speeding around the track and going through the corners and feeling the G-forces.
02:52 It's just a wonderful experience and thanks to Mike to have the vision to make this happen and
03:00 I'm hoping that Mike will share more of his secrets and I can take some of those back to
03:05 Australia and empower more people to enjoy the experience of motorsport.