I’ve just read the last page of a biography of Caleb McDuff, the 17-year-old deaf racing driver from Pontypool. The story of the former Cwmbran High School pupil is a cracking read.
‘Breaking the Sound Barrier: The Caleb McDuff Story‘ is written by Ian, his dad, who used the third person voice, as he found it easier to tell the story with this “distance”.
My brother-in-law nicknamed me “Driving Miss Daisy” many years ago, which paints a picture of my views on speed.
Caleb’s story isn’t just about the emotions of racing around tracks at speeds that would give me nightmares. Just take a moment to imagine doing those speeds without hearing everything around you – and for a long part of his young career, he had to race with no contact with his trackside team.
The book covers the emotions off the track, from the moment they found out he had a problem with his hearing, learning to race at G Force Karting in Pontypool, to the financial struggle of being a self-funded sport, sleeping trackside in a cramped old van, to losing sponsors, and everything stopping during the Covid lockdowns.
Ian takes us on a trip up, down, and across the UK – and even to a car testing event in Portugal.
The miles on the road, long nights fixing cars and improving cars, the worries and stresses of being involved in a dangerous sport, all form part of this cracking story of a local young man.
‘The engine stopped!’
I’ve never met Caleb. But one line gives a good idea of his sense of humour. It came as he started using state-of-the-art technology that allowed his trackside team to communicate with him while he was competing.
During the final laps of one event at Donnington, his pit team “erupted into chaos” after he shouted, “the engine stopped! The engine stopped” through his headset.
When he got back into the pits, he revealed, “I thought I’d just wake you all up. The car was perfect.”
The miles on the road, long nights fixing cars and improving cars, the worries and stresses of being involved in a dangerous sport, all form part of this cracking story of a local young man.d this led to another funny moment ( I think his dad can laugh now) that saw Ian bid £100 for a replacement rabbit on Ebay (he got it for 99p but paid £20 cash) and an eight-hour round trip to collect it.
Buy a copy
You can get a copy of ‘Breaking the Sound Barrier: The Caleb McDuff Story’ on his website here.