Bio

When I was 16 years old, I knew I wanted to get a job in sport but I wasn't very fit, which is still the case, and for the sport I loved most, F1, you need a lot of money and probably needed to start karting at a younger age.

So, I made a blog where I did weekly posts about F1 and other motorsport. From general previews and columns, I even made calendars for about a dozen motorsport series for the 2017 season.

Even though I rarely hit triple figures for articles, my passion for motorsport and enjoyment for writing carried me through for a year when a guy called Lester Forbes commented on one of my posts and asked me to get in touch.

I had no idea who he was but fired him a message and he told me about a new site called Motorsport.Radio. He basically wanted me to do what I did for my blog, but for their site, so that's what happened.

As well as writing, I made some stuff for their radio coverage and appeared on some shows so I'll always be thankful to Lester, and Connor Jackson who was the editor, for giving me a taste of being part of a website.

The highlight at Motorsport.Radio came at Autosport International in January 2020 when I did my first ever in-person exclusive interviews.

I talked to former F1 driver and pundit Karun Chandhok, Le Mans 24 Hour winner and Ayrton Senna's last teammate, David Brabham, as well as three-time BTCC champion Matt Neal.

I'm very glad I got to do something like this before the coronavirus pandemic hit and it taught me how to not get flustered when talking to great racing drivers.

Not long before Autosport International, I joined The Checkered Flag when I noticed they had slowed down on their coverage of the FIA World Rallycross Championship.

I sent the editor, Vince Pettit, an email and joined the big team to cover the series, writing race reports, previews and analysis pieces for each round for the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

I was also lucky to do some interviews with the 'Voice of Rallycross' Andrew Coley, reporter Neil Cole and several members of the most successful rallycross family, the Hansens including Kevin Hansen and Timmy Hansen.

At the same time, I was still at Motorsport.Radio writing about...whatever I wanted really..from F1 to Touring Cars and Formula E, anything that came into mind when I mind, well not anything of course..

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, writing about motorsport kept me going and the grind of writing purely through passion, rather than money, paid off (excuse the pun) at the end of 2020.

I was going through a tough time during the final 100 days or so of 2020, for personal reasons. 

But I happened to come across a role on LinkedIn, which I'd only had for about a month - I highly recommend using it if you don't already.

The job was a writing role at a new company called RacingNews365, I saw there was a Dutch website but didn't think much of it and because of the stuff I was going through I forgot I applied!

December came around and I got an email from someone called David Schiavone so I did an interview with him whilst he was at an airport and with his good friend Adriano Boin. 

They explained how RacingNews365 wanted to launch an English site and I was like 'so I'm gonna get paid for this' and David said 'oh yeah, this is proper'. I kept my cool and managed to get the job.

It was here where I learned to write quickly and effectively covering F1 to the nth degree, as well as understanding more about the media aspect in what is a complex, phenomenal sport.

I had a Driver Ratings series where I rated every driver after each of the 22 Grand Prix in the 2021 season which was great fun to do and I was able to show my nerdy knowledge about a sport I've always loved, and got paid for it!  

I also did live blogs, practice, qualifying and race reports, plus a tonne of copy writing. I did full-time shifts in the summer (45 hours a week) and part-time hours when I was at university which ranged from 8-20 hours a week, depending on how busy I was!

I probably should have mentioned further up that I took the traditional route of high school, college and university. 

I studied Journalism at the University of Sheffield from 2019 to 2022 but was able to balance all of the above with my studies, and still ended up getting a first which was nice. 

Despite being in my final year in 2022, I wanted to expand my experience so I made the jump to MARCA where I learned a lot about SEO, as well as covering the latest Football, F1 and other major sporting news. 

I'd actually done some stuff with MARCA in 2021 when I did a live blog for every stage of the Tour de France and wrote some Cycling pieces, again for Google purposes.

The other highlights were writing about the Men's Australian Open final when Rafael Nadal brilliantly came back against Daniil Medvedev from two sets to win his 21st Grand Slam. That was a cool morning and early afternoon. And, of course, doing the race live blog for each F1 Grand Prix.

As well as MARCA, I still wrote about F1 and other motorsport, this time with Total-Motorsport, who I am still with now.

I'm the features writer at Total-Motorsport, giving my opinions and analysing the biggest stories from F1, Formula E, IndyCar and WRC.

My post-weekend debrief pieces and any strategy articles I do are probably my favourite, although I just love writing and talking about motorsport.

I was very lucky to go abroad for a media event for the first time in April 2022, travelling to Barcelona for the Nitro Rallycross media and test day where I interviewed F1 champion Jenson Button, WRC winner Kris Meeke and several rallycross stars.

Ok this next section is going to be weird. Everything above was written in June 2022, a month where I moved to London. So the two sentences you have just read and the below is being typed on my phone as I travel back up north from London in April 2023 on a notepad app thing, before copying and pasting it over onto my laptop (the same day I nearly ended my colleague's dreams of running the London Marathon, should not have told the old man to kick a rock hard football).

Anyway. Why did I move to London? Well, in March 2022 I applied for a junior news editor role at Eurosport. I had a group interview then a one to one interview and I was very confident I would get the role.

That's probably going to sound arragont if it does, so sorry. I just love Eurosport though and at the time, coming into my final couple of months at Uni, it really was the perfect opportunity and I knew my knowledge of niche sports, which happen to be the sport's Eurosport had the rights for, would come into play here.

I was confirmed to get the role in April, so a big thank you to Tom and Marcus as they were the guys that interviewed me and they were both outstanding when I was working at Eurosport.

It meant a move to London though, something I never really considered as I do like the north of England and moving out to the capital into a living space that's probably a third of the size of your uni room and that accommodation for about three times the price, not great. You're living with people who are all different ages and very different too as well, so it's a big, big change.

The place was not good, the less said about that, the better but a couple of my flatmates were great to be fair, so Anwar if you're reading this, thanks mate and thanks for putting up with me screaming at racing cars.

Back to Eurosport. The first few weeks were training and just seeing how everything works because going from uni to such a big company is a massive step up. But, I felt alright with it all. The CMS seemed very complex at first because there is a lot more to do than the writing but it all became natural.

Then I start getting put on key shifts such as the Vuelta a Espana, one of cycling's Grand Tours, the US Open alongside the man I call the benchmark for writing and efficiency, Dan, F1 stuff which was very natural to me, Speedway Grand Prix and I very happily covered the night Roger Federer played his final professional tennis match at the Laver Cup, so that was fun.

This  all happened over the space of a couple months very naturally and it made me feel, I can be as good as my colleagues and I can easily earn the trust and responsibility from my boss because he saw I could do these, what Eurosport call, feature shifts. Those were a key few months looking back, I probably showed a lot of, using Roy Keane's words, character, desire, personality. But yeah, and I'll say this a lot, thanks to my colleagues for giving me that trust.

Now snooker, absolutely loved covering this for Eurosport, I went to the Masters at the Ally Pally in January 2023, did a whole host of shifts for the Home Nations tournaments. Yes Ronnie O'Sullivan's brilliance with a three-and-a-half minute century or his tip flying off made things intense at time, but to lead a lot of the snooker coverage during the season, because it is very different and tricky to understand to your average person, that was nice. Jimmy White by the way, spoke to him a few times, top guy.

What else? I think it was just the environment, the ability to, I guess, showcase that I could (I hope) have a high quality level of writing for a massive range of sports, that was what I was most happy with. It really comes in handy to know about more than I'd say three sports, especially if they are smaller ones.

I was given subbing duties too at some stages, so I think it was the, who cares that you're 10 or 20 years younger than us, mentality from my colleagues and that they judged me for what I did and probably gave me a lot of confidence that made things, I wouldn't say easy, but everything that was thrown at me just came naturally. From day one I said, if I make a mistake, even if it's something small, tell me straight away. Because I would feel the need to do the same right?

There's also, at least from my side, that ability where you can speak out and have conversations or disagree with how something is done, which I think is really important. Eurosport, for me, did these things really well and that's why I loved it there.

Before we get onto the next bit, I was still doing bits for Total-Motorsport. I spent probably a dozen days where I didn't write or edit something for either Eurosport or Total-Motorsport from July 2022 to April 2023. I just enjoy keeping on top things and writing up random ideas or features I think of. Is it obsessive? Possibly. Is that a bad thing? Well, at the moment, as of writing, I don't see work as "work". I'm doing what I've set out to do. Get paid to write about sport.

This next section was written on 4 May 2023 because I think I fell asleep on the train above and now I'm on a plane to Monaco...so here we go.. 

In December 2022, I went abroad again this time to Valencia for Formula E testing. I learned that the Circuit Ricardo Tormo is very VERY hard to get to because it's in the middle of nowhere and three trains a day stop at the track. Not ideal.

I had an absolute mare when going there as had to wait six hours in Manchester Airport only for the flight to be cancelled. Tried my luck again the next day, so missed the first day of testing, but had to go to Mallorca first. Anyway I got there and it was pretty good.

Berlin in April for more Formula E fun saw more travel nightmare because they announced an airport strike just two days before the Monday I was flying back. So that caused A LOT of stress. Also, the olave we stayed in was terrible. Luckily I was with a colleague but even he said it was worse than your first six months as a parent in terms of sleep. It was a hostel with three bunk beds.. And it smelled.. Not nice.. Wouldn't recommend.

This is the into a travel blog I realise. So I'll stop there with that. Back to my career.

Went to Monaco, where this bit was written and I assume it was much better (edit on 11 May 2023, it was very very good)

Roll back a couple months and I saw on Twitter and LinkedIn a job advert from the Sky Sports digital team about a job that predominantly covers F1. I was very happy at Eurosport but I thought I might as well apply for this Sky role because it's F1 and Sky is pretty much as big as you can get in the UK.

I thought I messed up the interview but I was made an offer and yeah, it would have been silly to turn down. So I took it and here I am now at Sky. Let's see when I next put an update on this site, if you're reading this, hi, thanks for reading, go do something useful and try and enjoy it;)