Saad Ali is in pole position to become Pakistan’s first Formula 1 driver, a seemingly impossible target in a country with no race tracks and where all the sport sponsorship money is poured into the national obsession — cricket.
The 28-year-old faces significant hurdles before he can become one of 22 elite drivers at the pinnacle of motorsport, but a decade after his “clueless” beginning as a college dropout hooked on racing, he is edging towards his target.
“As a kid I was always interested in cars, but there was no racing in Pakistan, it was not even on television” he says.
He competed in the Formula Gulf 1000 series in 2014, reaching the podium to take third place twice in one weekend in Abu Dhabi. Describing that race as a “big stepping stone”, he adds it was “proof to me that this is something that I could pursue and achieve”.
Now he must conquer the Formula 3, GP3 and GP2 classes, seen as stepping stones on the road to Formula 1.
“Getting there is extremely tough, extremely hard, extremely competitive,” he says. It is also expensive. “I have been racing by myself for the country without support, flying the Pakistani Flag on circuits making a name for racing” says Ali, who last year was only able to compete in go-karting’s 2F2F Endurance Grand Prix in Pakistan due to the sheer costs of taking part in motorsport.
Ali became interested in racing when he was in college in Islamabad in 2006, adding: “I was absolutely clueless as nobody in Pakistan had done professional race car driving”. He dropped out and went to the Formula BMW Racing Center (FBRC) Bahrain, where aspiring drivers can learn the art of racing. “After three days of training I joined the racing school’s championship” he said, describing the decision as a “pivotal” point in his life.
Sitting in a claustrophobic racing car for the first time nearly put the brakes on his F1 dream, he admits. “When you sit in a race car and you put on the helmet, you can’t breathe properly” he said, adding that with the seat belts so tight they left three-inch marks branded on his shoulders, he could only get his lungs about half full.
But he pushed through and has since been racing in the Formula BMW and Formula Renault circuits.
The scale of what he is trying to do has not escaped him. “If you go to Formula 1 that’s 22 of the best drivers competing against each other.”
But, Ali believes, if he was given the opportunity, he would “definitely achieve a lot more….The thrust is there, the desire is there, the fire and the hunger — everything is there”.
Contributed by: Team Kluchit.