In April 2017, Billy Monger’s future came flying apart at 120mph. That was the speed the then-17-year-old racing prodigy was driving at when his Formula 4 car collided with another vehicle in a freak accident at Donington Park. He lost both legs and was lucky to survive; when he woke in hospital, he was told that doctors had been able to save him only by putting him in an induced coma.

“As a racing driver, you never really think of the outcome of, ‘If I have a bad crash, I could lose my life, I could lose my legs.’ You try not to make that come into your mind. You’re just always going to hold back if you’re thinking about the worst possible outcome. Instead you’re thinking about the best possible outcome,” he said.

But as he lay in bed, Monger – whose exploits on the track had earned him the nickname “Billy Whizz” – was now facing that worst possible outcome. He was a teenager who had almost died doing what he loved and would live out the rest of his life as a double amputee. “You never think that you’re going to be the one to crash. You know accidents happen in motorsport. You never think it’s going to be you until, for me, I was that person having the accident.”

Almost a decade later, the 27-year-old has not only found a way to carry on – he has flourished. He shared his painful journey from coma to recovery in the moving BBC documentary, Driven: The Billy Monger Story, and went on to appear on the 2024 Christmas edition of , where he glided across the dance floor on prosthetic legs, performing an American Smooth to “Merry Christmas” by Ed Sheeran and Elton John.

He also competed on BBC One’s Celebrity Race Across the World in 2023; set a male double-amputee world record in the Ironman World Championship; and hopes to represent Britain at the 2028 Paralympics, in para-triathlon.

Of all his achievements, the one that has surprised him the most, however, is his latest. He’s written a charmingly chatty and vulnerable self-help book called , which he hopes will light the way for teenagers looking for positive role models in a world full of toxic influencers.

He recalls how the idea came to him as he learned about the manosphere from shows such as the documentary Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, and , the searing Netflix drama about a 13-year-old boy arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate.

“I’ve seen the Louis Theroux one, I’ve seen . And obviously it brought up a lot of issues that the younger generation, particularly young men, are facing. And having had the messages of positivity that I’d received from my documentary and comparing it to what I was seeing on people’s screens, it felt maybe I could do something.”

He doesn’t spend much time on TikTok and Instagram, but what he has observed of the manosphere shocks him. “A lot of what we see on social media, a lot of what’s targeted at young men and young individuals at the minute, is about putting on a facade and acting in a certain way – to pretend you’ve got it figured out.”

The truth is “no one’s got it figured out completely”. He certainly didn’t when he woke in hospital and was told he’d lost his legs and was lucky to be alive.

“It’s about trying to be the best version of yourself. And you’ve got to put yourself in some challenging scenarios, I believe, to grow as an individual. My accident was a challenging scenario that, OK, I didn’t pick out for myself. But it was still, at the end of the day, up to me to deal with it in the best way possible. No one was going to live my life for me and come back from that moment for me.”

Monger wants young men to know there is another way, and in , he talks about the importance of staying true to things you believe in (“other people will respect you for that”) and accepting that life doesn’t always work out as you had hoped it might.

“I want to make sure I live my life to the max, do the things that make me happy and stay driven,” he writes in the introduction to the book, co written with Seth Burkett, a former professional footballer turned author. “And I want to show you how to do the same.”

may be aimed at younger readers, but much of it reads like a confessional written from the heart. Monger writes openly about his insecurities – overcoming his terror of public speaking and his worries that he wasn’t qualified to present Channel 4’s Formula 1 coverage alongside F1 veterans David Coulthard and Mark Webber.

“My voice seemed so unimportant compared to theirs. Why would anyone be interested in what I had to say?” he explains, before concluding that his strength lay in his status as an outsider. “I could make F1 make sense to anyone watching a race for the first time.”

He talks, too, about his challenges with imposter syndrome. Monger recalls being taken aback by the response to , which followed his recovery and his emotional return to the racetrack in a specially adapted car with a hand-operated gearbox.

“I had my accident and it was obviously broadcast on TV. Lots of people then started to call me an inspiration through my documentary and coming back into the sport. In my head, what was quite difficult to comprehend in the early days was that, ‘I’m the same person that I was before, but now I’ve had an accident’ – which in effect is a form of failure in motorsport.”

For someone as hyper-focused and driven by logic as Monger, it didn’t make sense. He’d crashed his car – and, fair enough, it was a freak incident that was no reflection on his driving abilities. But how did that turn him into a hero?

“I’ve effectively been involved in a crash. OK, probably nothing I could have done to avoid it, but in my head, it was just dealing with the fact that… all of a sudden I’ve been in a crash that’s resulted in me being injured, and all of a sudden that makes me inspirational.”

He is open about it taking some time to get his head around the fact that complete strangers now look up to him as someone to emulate. He never asked to be a role model – and yet when he emerged blinking into the daylight after his crash, he soon became aware that those were the terms in which he was viewed.

“The most important thing that probably took a couple of years to digest properly for me was that, as much as the way people had viewed me had changed, I was the same individual. And actually I didn’t want to put any more pressure on myself to be a role model and act in a certain way. I just wanted to be myself. If people said that I was inspirational for that, that was their decision to make, and their opinion. As long as I was happy with the person I was and I didn’t think I was trying to be something that I’m not – that was kind of the point I got to with it.”

He also had to deal with the knowledge that his parents felt some guilt about the accident. His father Rob was a motorsports enthusiast who bought Billy his first go-kart when he was three years old and encouraged his son’s dream of becoming an F1 driver. And then at 17, Billy was placed in an induced coma while surgeons amputated both his legs. Monger is all too aware that his father would have wondered whether he could have done things differently as a parent.

“Guilt is definitely one of the emotions that he would have felt after my accident, naturally, as a parent. He was the one who got me into the sport. So when I then had this life-changing accident, I’m sure he was thinking, ‘If I hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have had this accident. He wouldn’t be going through what he’s going through.’ We had plenty of conversations after my accident about it – because I knew that was probably one of the emotions he was feeling.”

They had a heart-to-heart where Monger told his father that there was no need to feel guilty. “He always gave me the option at plenty of points in my career to be like, ‘If you’re not enjoying this, we don’t have to do this any more.’ The conversation after the accident was based around the fact that ‘you got me into the sport, but I was the one who fell in love with it, and I was the one who wanted to keep doing it, and it was completely my decision’.”

Next for Monger is the 2028 Paralympics, assuming he qualifies. He’s working hard, though he has to fit his training regime around his presenting duties with Channel 4. Reaching Los Angeles will be a huge achievement, and failure is always a possibility – but Monger wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Like most of the challenges I’ve set myself, it’s normally quite a lofty, high ambition. That’s what gets me out of bed. That’s where I find my purpose – by doing things right on the edge of being possible or not. Like a lot of challenges I’ve done in the past, there’s been highs and lows to it already – in terms of a few injury setbacks and bits and pieces to deal with. I’m in that stage now where soon I’ll know a lot more about where I am in the picking order and how my chances of making it to the Games are looking. I’m hoping I can make it happen.”

The way he sees it, if his new book can make life better for just one reader, then he will have helped make the world a better place. “Maybe I could do something to hopefully help, even if it was just one young individual, a young man going through some struggles. Give them a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. You can get through any challenge that you’re faced with. You don’t have to go down a particular path or be someone you’re not.”

‘Find Your Drive‘ is published by Rocket Fox