So far I have clocked up 9 years of racing experience and, at 18 years of age, I have been racing for half my life.

My career started at a dusty East Anglia kart track, with myself, my dad, a comer cadet and a new set of slicks... (It rained but we had fun anyway).

That day was the realisation of the first part of an ambition I had, had since I reached the age where having realistic dreams of where your adult life will lead you is plausible. It was the End of the beginning, of a story that started with a 5 year old Alex sitting in a (Quite convincing) cardboard Benetton making racing car noises, a story which will hopefully end with an adult Alex Sitting on the grid at Monaco in Years to come.

After a little time to get used to things the next logical step was to go kart racing. Over 4 years of fantastically enjoyable and manic kart racing I started to learn my trade and was able to make a start on that all important trophy cabinet, delivering wins and Podiums in novice and more experienced categories, leading club championships and kick starting my career. During my karting years, racing remained very much a hobby however, and my education, a 'backup plan' had to take a leading role. This meant time for racing was squeezed to the outer edges of my concentration as exam pressure took over, perhaps hindering my results a little.

I had proven myself to have potential and this was enough for those around me to see fit to promote me into circuit racing at the age of 14. I soon realised what a massive step this was, as I struggled to coax my 120mph 900kg T-car out of the pits for the very first time. As I am from a racing background I have always been told that racing is 50% pain 10% joy and 40% indifference. Although pleased to have this advice I have always loved to race however this first year in circuit racing proved to me that when motorsport hits back, it tends to sting!

This lesson came in my first race weekend ever, at brands hatch, in the form of a throttle stuck wide open into the first corner, paddock hill bend. Although a little shaken from my somewhat hurried introduction to the Tyre wall, it would take a lot more than that to beat my love of motorsport out of me.

I soon managed to get my head around it and as the only first year driver in a series full of older hands I was happy to take 2 podiums from my rookie year.

The next step I took after only one year on the large circuits was the biggest of my career so far. After only one year of saloon car racing , and with my head still spinning a little as I desperately tried to work out how to find those last few tenths, I was catapulted Into the super fast blur of driving a high power single seater. 300hp and 500kgs that accelerate to 100mph 3 seconds faster than a Buggatti Veyron is quite fast when you are only just16. This car was double the power and half the weight that I was used to in my t-car and it blew my mind. I distinctly remember going along rivet straight at Snetterton with my mouth wide open dumbfounded at levels of speed. This is laughable to me now as towards the end of my second year in this category the cars felt so unbelievably pedestrian and dull, but right then and there I felt like I was going as fast and humanly possible.

Pure exhilaration and raw car control carried me in the early days of single seater racing. In my first ever race I was exceptionally fast in qualifying, putting myself on the front row of the grid, but then speed and pressure got on top of me, crashing out and finishing 10th. Maybe single seaters, that early, was too much to young but in this fast moving world you have to get on with it or your moment to shine passes.

Get on with it I did, learning through my first year and then taking 3 podiums and a pole in the second year only twice finishing out of the top 10. In this year I had to take a step back to go forwards getting the raw technique of a lap right and then adding my natural aggression and speed on top to build a result. I always liked to think of myself as an aggressive driver, someone who you think twice about trying to pass and I started to grow this ruthless yet measured aggression into the way I went racing.

Early in this second year of single seaters was when things started to change from being just a hobby to a way of life. I started to grow a professional attitude, training harder and more effectively. I matured a little and started to learn that all out attack all the time was not the way to go racing. And , although interrupted by my A levels, as the year ended I felt like the next would be the year that I could deliver at a high level with a new found grasp on my own speed and ability to apply it.

Over the winter prior to formula 2 racing winter, I found a new level of performance in formula 3 testing and a formula 1 style training regime which put me in the top 3 at the first test of the year in the formula 2 championship. Being the championship, where it has been alledged there is the best competition in the world outside formula one the gauntlet is very much set.

I have a short amount of time to deliver at a world class level if I am to make it to formula 1. I have confidence in myself But in the words of Murray Walker ... 'anything can happen in motorsport, and it usually does'

Alex