Ten years ago, two boys were splashed over the newspapers when they became the youngest drivers signed by McLaren. Lewis Hamilton was 13 and already had a certain cool about him. Wesley Graves was 12, wore outsized spectacles and looked rather geeky. Today, Hamilton is said to be the most valuable commodity in British sport; Graves is unemployed, lives at home with his parents in their Leicester council house and hasn't raced for seven years.
Wesley Graves cannot think about anything but racing cars. To say he is frustrated is an understatement. The past few months have been particularly tough for him as Hamilton has come out of nowhere to be a household name.
His parents, Steve and Christine, have brought down all the old photos and the trophies their little boy won. Way before he could talk, Wesley was making motorcar noises. Steve doesn't know where it came from - he wasn't interested in cars and hadn't even passed his test till he was in his mid-30s.
Wesley: "I used to run round the house pretending I was a car. Weird, wasn't it?"
Christine: "He was five. Used to sit there in class doing car noises. They used to ring me up and say, could you talk to Wesley about these car noises?"
Steve: "Different noises for different engines."
Christine: "The teacher would say to him, 'You're not a Ferrari today, Wesley.' If he hears a car coming down the street, he knows what it is."
The three of them talk like a team. It soon becomes apparent that his parents were as involved in Wes's budding career as he was. They enjoyed every triumph and took collective umbrage at every slight.
At four Wesley was racing go-carts at 30-40mph, despite his dreadful eyesight. He took his glasses off for racing, until his parents insisted he put them back on. Weren't they terrified?
"Not really, no," Steve says.
"Yes," Christine says. "I couldn't watch him when he was young. I used to sit in the toilets with my fingers in my ears so I couldn't hear the Tannoy telling me where he was. Then somebody would come and fetch me and say, 'He's won, he's won!' "
At six he was driving at 60-70mph, and at nine he won the Midland and Southern Championship. He loved starting at the back and coming through to beat the field. Christine says other parents couldn't believe he was winning fairly and accused them of tinkering with the car.
What made him so good?
"Talent," Wesley says. "I don't know - I can drive." He still talks about racing in the present tense. "I love winning, I do. I love it. You get a feeling just here." He taps on his chest. "I feel good, I feel proud, if I don't win I don't like it."
With other sports, too? He shakes his head. "I don't like other sport, really. Just motor sport."
Steve Graves used to have an engineering business. He estimates that during the five years before Wesley joined McLaren, he spent £2,000 a month on his son's racing - £120,000 in total. "We saw it as an investment. Racing became like an addiction. It took me four years to get over it when Wes stopped racing."
The business went bust (partly due to recession, partly because of debts incurred by the racing) and they lost their house. The Graves family now believe they made the wrong decision signing for McLaren. It might have seemed like a short cut to fame and fortune, but this was where they lost control of Wesley's career. Wesley says he couldn't get used to the new McLaren car, and while the older Hamilton was put into a new elite class called Junior Yamaha, which meant he was only ever competing with a handful of other drivers, he was left floundering in a car he didn't like, racing against fields of around 50.
Wesley thinks Lewis Hamilton was given special treatment. "They wanted to have the first black Formula 1 driver."
At the end of the year, Hamilton was kept on and Graves was released. He has never raced since. Motor racing is not like other sports, his parents whisper - it's all about money and who you know rather than what you know. They reckon they'd need a minimum of £50,000 to get Wesley back on the road and have sought sponsorship to no avail.
Without his racing, Wesley went downhill. He got into trouble at school, disrupting the class. You weren't making car noises, were you? He smiles, for the first time. "No, just mischief. Not doing work, tormenting people. I felt lost." Does he watch the grands prix now? "I don't like watching it. It does my head in. I don't like looking at him, really."
"I don't think he means directly at him," his mother says gently.
"I don't like looking at him racing."
Because it should be you? "Yes."
"No, probably both of them," Christine says. "Wouldn't you say, Wes?"
"Well, I should be there anyway."
Christine: "Well, not even in Formula 1 probably, but somewhere."
"No, in Formula 1. But I'll never get to where he is. Not now. That's gone. I could get somewhere else."
Since leaving school, he has not held down a job. Sometimes he works with his father, who's now a landscape gardener. He says he has not got himself a job because he is a racing driver; this is what he was born to do. "And I will do it one day. I will. I'll be back." He has just applied for a racing scholarship and talks about when he gets it, not if, despite the fact that more than 200 are competing for it.
What does he think of the stories that Hamilton could earn £1bn over the next 10 years ? He laughs bitterly. "It's horrible." Why? "Because I'm sitting here talking to you about what I could have been and what I should have been. That's why it's horrible. Then they say he's worth this much money. It does my head in. I hate it. It was like I was on the way, and it's took away from you."
