Racing driver, 22, has career stalled by kidney dialysis and wait for transplant

A 22-year-old racing driver who has been working towards a career in motorsport since he was six has had his aspiring career waylaid by an urgent need for dialysis as he waits for a kidney donor.

Dan Mackintosh, who lives in Dorset, has battled nephrotic syndrome, a kidney disorder that causes leakage of protein into urine, causing low blood protein, fluid retention, high cholesterol and increased risk of infection and blood clots, since he was an infant.

His condition is chronic and incurable, and despite his hard work to progress towards a career in motorsport he has faced numerous setbacks due to his health, robbing him of his dream to race in Formula 1.

Dan’s interest in racing began when he was six years old, when his family moved from Aylesbury to Dorset and he found himself living around the corner from a karting track.

Dan and his dad went to the Clay Pigeon Raceway one weekend to watch the kart racing, and Dan remembers it looking like “really good fun”, saying to his dad: “I’d love to have a try of that”.

Dan’s dad Terry is a keen motorsport fan, and they would watch Formula One, NASCAR, and touring car racing together – so he was thrilled with Dan’s desire to start racing himself.

After school, Dan would go “round and round and round” the track, loving every second – and “eventually it got to the point where I was going quite quick, and they said ‘you should start entering races’”, he told PA Real Life.

For his seventh birthday, his dad splashed out on an old go kart, the one he had been running laps of the track in for months, and used his basic mechanical knowledge to tinker with the engine while Dan improved his skills as a driver.

As time went on, Dan was able to join a team, access more powerful karts, and get a couple of sponsors on board to help with the financial side of racing.

He raced for BKC Racing, the very same karting team that the newly-crowned F1 World Champion Lando Norris raced for, and seemed set for big things.

“It’s just impossible to make it in motorsport without the funding,” Dan said, noting that the vast majority of the drivers who make it to Formula 1 have immense wealth that enables them to compete in the sport, money which Dan and his family don’t have access to without sponsorship.

After winning a couple of championships with his karting team, Dan seemed on track for a career in motorsport, excelling in the preliminary stages where every Formula 1 driver begins.

However, when he was 13, he had a relapse of his kidney condition which meant he had to pause his journey at the point where many drivers would be transitioning from karts to cars.

After a long break of two years, Dan was able to return to kart racing and bagged another championship win, which he said “kept the fire alive”.

Finally, in 2019, he secured funding for a season in British Formula 4, the open-wheel racing car category for junior drivers which bridges the gap between karting and Formula 3, entering the gateway to professional racing driving.

But then the Covid pandemic hit, and Dan’s plans were once again put on hold as his sponsor said they had to pull the funding due to the uncertainty of the pandemic.

Thus, Dan was unable to enter Formula 4 and make that leap in his career, “just as I was on the brink of another big thing”.

Never one to be deterred, Dan transitioned to classic car racing, then began coaching drivers who had access to incredible cars, getting the chance to race the likes of old-school Jaguar E-Types to an LMP3, Le Mans Prototype 3 endurance race car.

“My dream has always been to make it a career,” he said of racing driving.

“I enjoy being a coach, but I’d love to be a proper racing driver that gets paid. Which is quite a rare thing – the only drivers that really do that at the top, in things like Nascar, Formula One, Formula E, and things like that.”

Now, Dan is looking to secure funding to compete in European Nascar, which was “looking quite positive” until he had some more bad news relating to his kidney condition earlier this year.

“It seems like every time I get to a certain point, something happens,” he said.

While Dan has lived with nephrotic syndrome since he was a baby – having been diagnosed at Great Ormond Street Hospital shortly after his birth, when his parents noticed he was swollen and looked unwell, he has faced ups and downs throughout his life.

“For the first five years I was in hospital for Christmas and things, so pretty rough,” he said.

“But then it started getting a little bit better. We thought, okay, it could be managed.

“I’ve been on medication my whole life, which has been keeping it at a stable level.

“But every three years or so I have a bit of a relapse, my kidney function declines.

“I end up feeling very, very tired. I feel quite weak, I can’t do that much.

“I gain quite a lot of fluid, which, for racing, is not great, because you always try to be as light as possible.”

In June this year, Dan’s condition “took a bit of a plummet”, and he felt extremely lethargic and even going about his day-to-day life felt like “a real big effort”.

“Things like going up the stairs were making me tired,” he said.

He went into hospital where they ran tests for renal function, and the test results indicated that he needed to start dialysis immediately, or risk losing his life – devastating news for anyone, let alone a 22-year-old who should have his life ahead of him.

Two weeks ago, Dan had a peritoneal catheter fitted into his abdomen, which helps to filter waste and excess fluid from the body.

“I still am a little bit sore from it, but I’m getting used to it,” he said.

“I plug myself in now, every single night, to a machine which basically does what my kidneys would do for me, so it filters out toxins going in with this liquid, and then filters out again, so that at the moment is what’s keeping me at a stable-ish level.”

The only other thing for Dan is to wait for a kidney transplant, and in the meantime he has regular hospital visits for monitoring while he waits for a donor.

He has been told the waiting list for a deceased donor is around two to three years.

In the meantime, Dan remains unable to work while he undergoes dialysis and waits for his condition to stabilise. He hopes that once he’s well enough to resume coaching, he can continue pursuing the opportunity of racing in European Nascar, with a test scheduled for February, funding pending, and will not give up on his racing driving dream.

He has set up a GoFundMe fundraising page to help support him while he cannot work, and so far he has raised nearly £3,700 of his £4,000 target and is “blown away with the support”.

“I didn’t expect to raise anywhere near as much as I’ve raised.

“I’m still a little bit taken aback with it,” he said, adding that he wants to say a “massive thank you” to everyone that’s donated so far.

“I do get down about it, and I think it’s quite hard mentally as well,” he added of his ongoing battle.

“But then when you look at the messages, you look at the donations, you look at the people that are supporting you and want to see you back, fit and healthy, it’s a real big motivation to keep going.”

Dan’s fundraising page can be found here: www.gofundme.com/f/help-support-dan-through-kidney-dialysis