Sisa Ngebulana. Remember the name because you’ll be hearing a lot more of him in the future. This 17-year old Joburger had a relatively late start to his racing career – he first stepped into a kart at 12, when most of his rivals had already been competing for five or six years – but he is set for a bright future in international motorsport.
Since then Ngebulana has risen through the ranks of kart racing; he’s competed locally and abroad, and made headlines when he was chosen to be a part of the McLaren Young Driver Programme and Applied Technologies Performance Academy.
McLaren has a knack for spotting young talent (Raikkonen and Hamilton, for example) and once you’ve been earmarked by the chaps at Woking only good things can happen.
Ngebulana recently returned home to South Africa during a break from his racing schedule in the UK and chatted exclusively with CAR during that time.
CAR: Welcome back to SA, tell us about your acceptance into the McLaren programme:
Sisa Ngebulana: It seems that I was on McLaren’s radar because they had reviewed some data from the time I was using a race simulator. This impressed them and I was chosen from 30 000 candidates worldwide to be one of four to attend the academy.
CAR: What does the programme entail?
SN: There is a lot of mental and physical training. Over the course of 24 months McLaren carefully trains and monitors the drivers. They are keen to instil and cultivate a level of self-awareness that sets good drivers apart from the rest. They also keep a close eye on all my training as I have to download all my sessions and send it back to them for analysis. We are also trained in what to eat to maximise our training and also what to eat before and during a race weekend. It’s quite intense.
CAR: Where are you competing at the moment and how is it going?
SN: I am currently competing in the BRDC Formula 4 championship in the UK as member of the HHC Motorsport team and it is going really well. This is the first time I have raced single-seaters, before this I was only in karts. I started the season about two seconds (per lap) off the pace, but now I am about half a second of the leaders. My team-mates Harri (Newey, son of Adrian) and Will (Palmer, son of Jonathan) are the frontrunners so I measure myself against them. There is one other South African in the field, Sebastian Lanzetti, and I am usually about one second quicker than he is.
CAR: What’s been the highlight of your career to date?
SN: I finished second in a race quite recently, in wet conditions and that felt great. It was my first podium in the class and I was profoundly proud of my achievement.
CAR: What are you goals?
SN: As it is my first year in F4 I am targeting a top ten finish and I am going to compete in this class again next year. I am aiming to be in F3 by 2017 and the year after in F2 or GP2. Right now we are targeting 2020 for an entry to Formula One.
CAR: Ah, the big show. Do you think it’s going to be easy getting to that level?
SN: If you want to get into Formula One you have to be affiliated to a team and we already have that with McLaren. I am one of just six others currently participating in their programme so the odds are good. Other drivers who have been in this programme recently and stepped up are Kevin Magnussen and Stoffel Vandoorne (currently competing in GP2). Being in this camp is good because we also have access to other F1 teams.
To keep track of Sisa’s career and show your support check out his site: www.sisa37.com
Images courtesy of: www.AMSoul-Images.com