Team BRIT signed Callum Smith as a rookie driver in August 2026, making the Nuneaton-born 23-year-old the Callum Smith armless racing driver the world has never seen before: someone born without arms who competes at speeds exceeding 110 mph, steering entirely with his feet.
Smith has already posted a 100 mph top speed on the Silverstone Formula One circuit in his own Audi A3, and reached 90 mph during his first track day at Donington Park in July 2025. His longer-term target is a place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of motorsport’s most demanding endurance events.
How Callum Smith Drives Without Arms
The car Smith uses at Team BRIT is a modified BMW 1 Series fitted with a flat steering plate operated entirely by foot. His left foot turns the plate while his right foot handles the accelerator and brake. ‘On top of the accelerator I have an indicator switch which gives me buttons for the horn, headlights, window wipers etc,’ Smith said.
The physical challenge is real. ‘It’s hard, there’s a lot of eye to foot coordination,’ he said. ‘The biggest surprise to me is how heavy the steering feels in a race car, everything is stiffer.’ He added: ‘But I love it and I’m quite keen to get it sorted, I’m motivated to get it done.’
That adaptation to foot-based control is not new to Smith. He was born without arms and has navigated daily life using his feet throughout his life. ‘My feet are like my hands, I write with my right foot, I play Xbox with my feet like FIFA and Call of Duty,’ he said. ‘I play guitar with my feet, and I eat by myself use a normal knife and fork.’
His path to professional racing began with an email. ‘The racing started off with an email to Team BRIT expressing my interest in racing and I said if they were interested in making my dreams come true, I’d be forever grateful,’ Smith recalled. ‘They got back to me and I passed some tests with instructors and did a skid test, it went from there.’ He is currently working towards gaining his racing licence and continuing to develop his pace in the Team BRIT BMW.
Smith’s ambition is unambiguous. ‘I’m going to be the first person to be racing without any arms, the first one ever,’ he said.
The Team Built Around Callum Smith and Drivers Like Him
Team BRIT describes itself as the world’s only competitive racing team made up entirely of disabled drivers. Smith joins a roster that includes Harvey Phillips, a 21-year-old quadruple amputee from Louth, Lincolnshire, according to the Times of India.
Phillips lost parts of both legs, his right arm up to the elbow, as well as fingers and thumbs on his left hand after suffering meningitis when he was nine months old. His presence on the team underlines what Team BRIT is built around: not accommodation, but competitive racing by drivers whose adaptations to the car are engineering solutions, not concessions.
That framing matters. The modifications Smith relies on (the foot-operated steering plate, the indicator switch on the accelerator) are genuinely complex engineering answers to a genuinely hard problem. Race-car steering is stiffer than a road car by design, because precision at high speed demands it. Smith is not driving a specially softened version of the sport; he is learning to handle the same forces any driver at this level faces, with a completely different set of inputs.
Smith’s love of racing traces back to childhood. He fell in love with motorsport at two years old watching bike racing with his grandfather, Michael. That passion eventually turned into the email to Team BRIT, a skid test, a first track day, and now a signed contract and a specific goal.
The New York Post reports Smith works as a finance assistant in Nuneaton when he is not on track. His next formal step is securing his racing licence, which would open the door to competitive events and move the Le Mans ambition from a stated aim to a schedulable one.
