“I get so nervous before a session or a race, just thinking to myself, right, I can’t afford to crash.” Wait, what? I’ve spoken to a good number of racers in my time, but this conversation with Josh Owens is blowing my mind a little. The 22-year-old is a British 125 and GP2 champion, has raced CEV, and entered the 2018 British Grand Prix as a Moto2 wildcard (where, by the way, he finished morning warm-up in 13th place before the race was rained off).
“Yeah,” he responds casually to my outburst. “I hate it, it’s the worst part and it’s always in the back of your mind. It’s not nice. You go out in qualifying and think right, I need to put it all on the line here and set a time, but you can’t, basically. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just money.”
To be honest, I’m speaking to Josh but in my head I already had this feature written; I could list a few disadvantages of being a privateer and job done, article written. But the more he talks, the more I realise this is more involved than I first thought, and I learn that Josh and others like him have way more obstacles to overcome than just having to pay for a seat and perhaps one less data
