ASPIRING FORMULA 1 racing driver Lewis Appiagyei, 1, from Camden in north London has just earned himself a spot on a prestigious project. After a competitive application process, he has been selected for an internship with McLaren in partnership with Deloitte.

The Business Insights programme is an internship opportunity where Year 12 students will spend 6 months working across a range of subjects to solve complex real-world challenges.

Young Lewis is one of the hottest, high profile young racing drivers in the media at the moment and has featured on both the BBC and ITV News in the past week. He is also the youngest member of the Forbes Africa ’30 under 30’ list for this year. The racing protégé, who set a Guinness World Record aged 10 in sim racing, has been trailblazing since he was a kid.

The life-long McLaren fan nearly missed out on this opportunity, as he only found out about it at the last minute and had just 24 hours to get his application in.

Tour

Just last year Lewis was invited on a tour of the McLaren Technology Centre. Lewis relished the chance to get an insight into the inner workings of the place where one day he hopes to get a seat as a F1 driver.

This year now having this new opportunity to actually work with the McLaren team for real, as part of an internship gets him ever closer to his endgame, which is to join their young driver programme and make the F1 grid as a McLaren driver.

Who knows, maybe next year him and Zak Brown, McLaren’s team principal, who he ironically shares the same birthday, could be celebrating a McLaren win together, or their special day.

Lewis’ uncanny similarity with seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton makes for a very intriguing F1 conspiracy theory. Young Lewis revealed to the BBC World Service’s Sports Today programme that Hamilton was like his long lost twin. They are exactly the same in height and weight, their fathers even share the same name, Anthony.

Lewis Appiagyei’s dream to follow in Hamilton’s footsteps seems to have an element of inevitability about it as his story gathers momentum.