The U.K.’s Only Female Racing Driver with Spinal Injury Races Porsches
It’s probably all of our dreams to take a Porsche out on to a track and compete in a racing series. It’s difficult for a normal human being to go out and be successful, so if you add in paralysis you’d think it’d be impossible. Don’t tell that to Nathalie McGloin. She is the only female racer in the United Kingdom with a spinal injury, and races in a modified Porsche Cayman S.
McGloin was paralyzed from the chest down during an unfortunate traffic accident in her teens. Not wanting to let her paralysis ruin her life, she started playing wheelchair rugby. One of her teammates introduced her motor racing, and she was hooked.
Friends told her she’d be crazy to buy a Porsche 911 as her first fast car. They said she should try something slower first. She didn’t listen, and purchased a 911. Then, her friends suggested it was crazy for her to attempt to go racing. Wanting to prove them wrong, she purchased her racing Cayman S and got her race license, racing in a Porsche series.
Her Porsche has a different take on hand controls. They are designed in such a way that she can apply some throttle and brake at the same time. This allows her to basically be able to left foot brake when it’s necessary; something normal hand controls aren’t designed to do.
Since so much of racing is about feel, and the Porsche Cayman can provide so much information to the driver, McGloin had a special racing seat made that grips her upper-body. This allows her to feel the G-forces of the car and what the car is doing in a part of her body that still has feeling.
The sanctioning body in her race series allowed her to enter a Cayman that’s newer than what the series normally allows. This was so that she could compete with a car equipped with Porsche’s PDK gearbox. Obviously a manual transmission isn’t an option for her, and Porsche’s PDK is so intelligent that when left in the automatic mode it’s smart enough to anticipate shifts and make them when a driver normally would.
McGloin has also recently started a non-profit called Spinal Track, and it’s designed to help people who suffer from paralysis to get behind the wheel of a car on a racetrack and get racing. It teaches them how to use the special driving controls in addition to the normal race car driving stuff.
It’s an incredibly-inspiring video to watch, and definitely makes me wonder what I’m doing with my life. It’s a great story and some good news when it seems like good news can be hard to find.
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via [Carfection]
