Yahoo News Amputee driver Billy Monger to feature in Extreme E racing series
Amputee racer Billy Monger has been named as one of the latest competitors set to feature in the upcoming Extreme E championship.
The competition scheduled for 2021 is an environment-focused racing series, something which Monger is passionate about.
The driver underwent a double-leg amputation when he was 17 as a result of serious injuries sustained in a Formula 4 crash. The racer, nicknamed ‘Billy Whizz’, collided at 120mph into another driver who had stopped on the track at Donington Park in 2017.
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The Extreme E championship is the sister series to Formula E and will consist of 12 teams racing in fully electric SUVs on off-road tracks. The races, which will take place across five remote locations around the world, are designed to highlight the effects of climate change.
“Fighting climate change is incredibly important,” said 20-year-old Monger. “Everything we do now will affect future generations. It's definitely a responsibility, and one that I can't and won't just ignore.”
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At each site there will be a team of environmental experts from Cambridge University studying the effects of climate change in each environment.
The series will start in Greenland and move onto locations including the Amazon Rainforest, the Nepalese Himalayas and the Saudi Arabian desert. One further region is also due to be announced.
Monger will compete in the first series of the Extreme E championship alongside Chris Ingham and Jamie Chadwick who have won the European Rally and W Series respectively.
Ex-Formula 1 driver Karun Chandhok and Sam Sunderland, the first British Dakar Rally champion, will also race in 2021, joined by Formula E competitors Jerome d'Ambrosio, Daniel Abt and Oliver Turvey.
“Knowing that the Extreme E legacy program is going to mean we leave the locations in a better place than we’ve found them is a massive draw too,” said Monger. “It’s something that I would be really proud to be involved with.”
Surrey-born Monger made his return to racing earlier this year after competing in the Euroformula series in a specially modified hand-controlled car.
Extreme E joins Formula 1 as a racing series actively working on helping the planet. The top-tier of racing recently announced it has plans in place to become carbon-neutral by 2030.
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