Calum Nicholas: ‘I'm trying to inspire people from all backgrounds to look at F1'

The Guardian

14-02-2025

'Asking for forgiveness rather than permission has been my philosophy for a while now,' Calum Nicholas says as he shows the conviction and daring which has made him one of the most recognisable faces in Formula One. Nicholas, who still describes himself as a mechanic, is the senior power unit assembly technician at Red Bull Racing where he has helped Max Verstappen win the last four drivers' championships in a row, as well as being a key member of a team that clinched the constructors' titles in 2022 and 2023.
Nicholas has also become famous as one of the very few black faces in the F1 pit lane and a minor star of Drive to Survive on Netflix. He is now an author, having written his first book without the help of a ghostwriter, and he smiles when I ask if he had to clear this new literary venture with Red Bull.
'I should have done,' Nicholas suggests, 'but I wanted to be completely honest and talk about the subjects that mattered to me. I was acutely aware that if I approached Red Bull and said: 'Look, this is a project I'm taking on' they might have turned round and said: 'OK, but we'd like this from it.' At that point I'd lose some control over my work, which I didn't want.
'I was aware that Red Bull could also turn round and say: 'Well, you're not doing that while you work here.' So I took the leap and said: 'This is a project I'm really passionate about so I'm just going to do it without permission and I'll ask for forgiveness later. If I screw it up, it's on me.''
The 36-year-old recalls how a member of Red Bull's communications team once tried to give him a friendly warning. He was reminded that his new platform, where he spoke about his ambitions and concerns for diversity and inclusivity, was built on his work with the team.
Nicholas responded assertively: 'If we're being really honest here,' he told his white colleague, 'I have my platform because both yourselves and Netflix decided to leverage my ethnicity to make the team appear to the public as more ethnically diverse. If the company wants to try and take all the credit for my social media following, are you also prepared to take responsibility for the daily racial abuse I receive? You can't have it both ways, so which is it?''
That withering response reduced the man to embarrassed silence but Nicholas stresses now that he bears no ill will. He is also enthusiastic about Red Bull's response to his book: 'They've been incredible. I couldn't have asked for a better reaction. I remember approaching Paul Smith [who now heads the communications department at Red Bull] at the Italian grand prix last year, to tell him that the book was being announced in two weeks. He's a great guy, very honest and straightforward, and from the get-go he and Red Bull were like: 'Look, we'd really like to support you in this project.' Paul's only ask was that he could at least just read it before it was released to the public. I'm absolutely fine with that.'
Nicolas still has to endure racial abuse. 'There was plenty of it, particularly in 2021, 2022,' he says. 'It's usually anonymous social media accounts so I say to myself: 'In 13 years, I've never had a fan at a race track confront or abuse me in this way. Unfortunately, it's the world we're living in with people sat behind anonymous screens on computer. That's easier than when people say you're a token diversity hire. Knowing the work you've done to get to where you are, and trying not to engage with that sort of nonsense is very difficult. Outright abuse? Man, I'm so thick-skinned.'
Nicolas laughs but he also writes candidly, and often movingly, about racism and overcoming preconceptions as he charts his remarkable rise: 'While my mother worked herself to the bone and did incredibly well to get us out of a rat-infested flat above a kebab shop in East Ham and into a far better environment in north London, we were a working-class family and I was always acutely aware that many of my peers seemed to be playing to a different set of rules to me.'
But he is touching when paying homage to one of his early mentors in motorsport. Paul Bellringer gave him his first big break at Status GP and Nicholas learned so much in a two-year stint that was crucial to him eventually making it to F1. 'Paul was brilliant and kind but came from a different generation. He would talk about 'a coloured lad' and, just to wind him up, I'd say: 'What colour was he, Paul?' He'd apologise and say: 'Oh, Calum, you know what I mean. He was a black guy.''
Nicholas found it more painful when a black friend reacted bluntly to his dream of making it to F1. 'Cal, that's a white man's game,' Nicholas was told. 'They ain't gonna let you in.'
He pauses before saying: 'It was someone very close to me at the time. When I started to tell those around me what I was going to do for a living, there were two distinct reactions. One came from the people that I'd gone to school with, a good north London school. These were white kids, predominantly Jewish, and they understood me as a competitor. They said: 'Cal, you're going to be great.' Admittedly, they'd never had to consider the fact I'd stand out in that environment but there was never a doubt from them.
'When I used to tell my cousins and black friends, Lewis Hamilton and his dad were the only black people we'd see in a F1 paddock. It seemed an industry that either wasn't interested in them or that wouldn't allow them to be a part of it. I always reacted like super-unleaded fuel. You will fuel me to go and prove you wrong. It's something I've set out to change.'
Nicholas has overcome many obstacles but he makes light of them. 'I've tried not to think about it too much but there was one time when I was at another team and I found out that, despite having been there the longest of all the No 2 mechanics, I was earning the least. I emailed HR: 'It's come to my attention that I'm earning significantly less than other mechanics. Are there things that I can do to improve my skill set to bring my salary up to the rest?'
'Within eight hours, I had a new contract on my desk with a pay rise, but no explanation as to why we were in that position in the first place. I wonder if it was just the case of a team trying to employ someone as cheaply as they could, or something else. I guess we'll never know.'
Nicholas adds that 'the one thing that I struggled with early on in my career was that it can be quite intimidating being the only black guy. I worked in GP3 paddocks, F3 paddocks, the European Le Mans series, and until then I'd still not worked with anyone who wasn't a white European man. I hadn't even worked with any women in technical positions. It was difficult to not feel awkward. As a lover of golf, I still know the feeling. When we're away [at races around the world] we'll play at a really nice golf course, and it'll be in the clubhouse when I again think: 'God, I stick out like a sore thumb here.''
The atmosphere at Red Bull, among his fellow mechanics and engineers, sounds remarkably healthy. 'I've never felt anything other than unity with my teammates because we've always been able to have these conversations. It was never an unspoken thing that I was the only black guy. We always spoke about it.'
Nicholas began working at Red Bull 10 years ago last month and he charts the testing times when Mercedes were dominant. Eventually, in 2021, Verstappen pipped Hamilton to the championship in controversial circumstances, on the last lap of the last race in Abu Dhabi. 'Mercedes were so organised and had a plan for everything. We've always lived in comfortable chaos in the Red Bull garage so it was hard to see everything looking so calm while they were kicking our arse every week.'
He laughs drily. 'Mentally, it was very tough. We had been through so much disappointment and, with the pressure of a championship race, it became very stressful. But the collective euphoria in the garage when we finally won the title is something I'll remember for ever. Overall, 2023 was the most special year for the team [as Red Bull won 21 out of 22 races]. That was probably the best Formula One car ever built.'
For Nicholas, '2021 was my toughest year in the sport, and my mental health suffered, but I've had bad weeks since. Even last year I had a really bad Saturday in Brazil. It was my daughter's sixth birthday. I remember putting the phone down after speaking to her before I went to the circuit. I looked at my suitcase and I was so close to heading for the airport. You get so tired, especially with the triple headers at the end of the season, Texas-Mexico-Brazil, and you question whether you're doing the right thing. Your daughter's on the phone saying: 'Oh, Daddy, please come home.' It's very difficult.'
Nicholas suddenly beams. 'But, if we have a good result, I'm obligated to go to the podium. Bella will watch at home and, if she doesn't see me at the podium, I'm getting a phone call.'
A new season looms and Nicholas believes 'it could be even more exciting than 2021. Ourselves, Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari are in the mix and it has the potential to be a blockbuster year.'
Verstappen is aiming to win his fifth straight championship and Nicholas says: 'Max is one of us in the team. He's just way more talented.'
He laughs again. 'You see the way people react to Max and they don't understand that we love his blunt honesty. We're in a sport where PR is everything. All the drivers have their media training but I really like the fact that the team give Max the freedom to express his genuine opinions. It's not necessarily about berating anyone else, and Max is perfectly able to be self-critical, but he's just going to be honest about it. That's refreshing in sport.'
Nicholas is just as refreshing and he will continue to bear the responsibility of, behind Hamilton, leading the drive to open up an overwhelmingly white business. He has almost 350,000 followers on Instagram and, he says, 'I've put myself in this position now of trying to inspire people from all kinds of backgrounds to look at F1. You can't decide you don't fancy it any more. I accept the path I've chosen and I feel a great responsibility – not just to inspire people but to try and leave the sport better than I found it.'
Calum Nicholas' Life in the Pitlane is published by Piatkus