The second school I attended was a private preparatory school called Wellsbourne, which I liked a lot. I immediately took to sports and soon became the captain of the school soccer and cricket teams. I loved sport and it seemed to come naturally to me. I realised early on that I could derive tremendous satisfaction from competing against children in other school teams and winning. Even at the tender age of seven, winning was everything to me. I made quite a good sports captain because I so badly wanted to win that I always motivated the other players in my team to try harder.
Academically I was one of those children whose end of term report usually contained the phrase, âHeâs bright and does well at the subjects heâs interested in, but could try harder.â I didnât care too much about studying and I hated doing my homework. After school I preferred to kick a ball around with friends or to ride my bicycle rather than settle in for the evening with a few mathematical puzzles.
Although I got by in most subjects, I didnât like Latin at all and I really wanted to get out of it. Luckily the Latin professor headed up the school chess team and when I expressed my dislike for ancient languages he said to me, âIf you donât like Latin, Iâll do a deal with you. If you get into the chess team, you can go to chess classes instead of coming to Latin.â At the time, chess was pretty big at Wellsbourne and we had regular competitions with other schools in which we used time clocks, large size boards and all the proper paraphernalia. It was all taken deadly seriously. I played intensively for two months, got into the chess team and never went to another Latin class.
Sadly the school closed down in the middle of a term and I was shunted into a school near my house called Hall Green Bilateral. It was a real culture shock. Whereas Wellsbourne had been an all-boys school with class sizes of around fifteen pupils, Hall Green was mixed and the classes were twice the size. To make matters worse, I started half way through the term, so I was out of step with everything.
Itâs a very difficult situation being the new boy. You stand out because you have a new uniform when everyone elseâs is worn in, and you donât know anybody. Before you get up to speed and settle in you get teased for being a âdunceâ and a âthickieâ because you donât know whatâs going on. At the age of between 7 and 14, other children donât care about you and they donât think for a moment about how you might feel. They only care about the things they are interested in, like sport, girls or being a bully. There were a lot of bullies at Hall Green Bilateral and predictably, soon after I arrived, they came to pick on the new kid.
I have never taken kindly to bullies and so I had a lot of problems. When they got rough with me I would always fight back and never give in. It was pretty nasty for a while. Although I was miserable at the time, I believe those formative years helped me a great deal in that they made me quite tough early on. Children can be unbelievably cruel to each other and if you can cope with that as a small child, very little in the adult world is likely to defeat you. As an adult Iâve been intimidated a great deal and Iâve been able to cope with and overcome all the hurdles.
I donât think a child usually forms a pattern of how he or she is until their middle teens, but I was forced to be my own person from a very early age because when you are thrown in at the deep end you learn to swim rather than sink. When you donât know anybody and nobody believes in you, you either shrink into nothing or you learn to believe in yourself and become more self-reliant.
My mother had a sixth sense when it came to people. She would be able to tell very soon after meeting them whether they were genuine or false, and I inherited that ability from her and put it to good use at school and later at college. Itâs an animal instinct, rather like dogs have, which tells you straight away whether someone is a friend or a foe. It has helped me to survive and to succeed in the business that Iâm in. I have stopped a lot of people in their tracks when they have come over all gushing and insincere, or when they have tried to get me to do something I donât want to do. I hate falseness and deception.
Like my mother, I am very sensitive to whatâs going on around me. I am renowned for being an incredible fighter, yet I have a soft side to my character. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to do something for a friend or a family member. Throughout my life I have found that many people seem to regard kindness as a weakness and will prey on that perceived weakness. Itâs is a side of human nature that I will never understand. Kindness is fundamental to my nature. But if a tough decision has to be made, I can be as hard as nails. If I believe something is right I will go through a brick wall to make it happen.
I used to get up to quite a bit of mischief, as any young boy does, but I was always pretty responsible and early on I developed a clear set of beliefs and values. I learned to trust what I thought was right and wrong and to do what I thought was right for me. It became the code by which I have lived my life and according to which I have made every important decision.
Looking back, my formal education was totally inadequate at times, mainly because of the lack of continuity. But in another way it was marvellous, because I was constantly thrown in at the deep end with people and I learned more because I was up against it. I was always mechanically minded and when I went to technical college a lot of the work came as second nature to me. It was a question of applying myself and if I wanted to apply myself I did pretty well, whereas at school I did just enough to pass the exams.
After Hall Green Bilateral I moved again, to Hall Green College, where I stayed until I was 16. I got a couple of GCE O-levels and a few CSEs, then went to Solihull Technical College. I was 19 years old when I transferred to Matthew Bolton College in Birmingham to study engineering.
Although when I was young I had a lot of unpleasant problems to contend with in the playground and I struggled on the academic side, my athletic ability always kept me going. I became a good, disciplined athlete and my competitive spirit grew stronger and stronger throughout my school years. I loved to win and however steep the odds I never regarded any game as lost until the final whistle blew. I played hard at soccer, crunching into every tackle and chasing every ball. Even if we were playing a so-called âfriendlyâ match against another school, I felt it absolutely necessary to play to win. I was at my best when my team was a goal or two behind and we had to fight back. If we won after coming from behind the satisfaction was even greater than usual. I loved team sports. Although I also enjoyed solo sports like tennis, I was always a team player and I learned a lot of lessons from playing team sports which would stand me in good stead later in life.
I had a lot of fun playing sports. I remember one soccer match I had at college where I scored the winning goal completely by accident. I was running back from the goal, trying to slip away from the defender who was marking me. The ball was crossed into the middle, but I couldnât see it because my marker was standing in the way. Suddenly the ball came through, hit me right in the face and flew into the goal. My team-mates seemed pretty impressed with my header. I had no idea what had hit me and I fell to the ground, so everybody thought it was a diving header and were even more impressed. In reality it was a total fluke, but the result was marvellous!
Some people have suggested that my fighterâs mentality was shaped by the fact that I come from Birmingham. They argue that because Birmingham is looked down upon by people in the more genteel South of England, its people have to fight harder for recognition. I think thatâs a bit of a myth. I donât believe that where you come from really matters. Although I am proud of my background, we have lived and travelled all over the world and my allegiance is to England rather than to any particular part of it.
My family and in particular my parents were very supportive of me as a child and my father backed my karting career. However, as will be explained in later chapters, they were not in favour of me pursuing a career as a professional racing driver. It caused a few problems for us initially, although they came around to my point of view in the end and we were reconciled. Their main objections to my chosen career were from the safety point of view as they didnât want me to get hurt or killed, but also my father saw a terrible struggle ahead for me and he just wanted me to be happy