AN INJURED Royal Marine from Bournemouth who has a semi-paralysed foot after he was hit five times in the legs by machine gun fire in Afghanistan has set his sights on GT motor racing.

Jimmy Hill, 35, is a driver for Team BRIT which aims to be the first ever all-disabled team to compete in the Le Mans 24 hour.

While deployed to Afghanistan in 2013, Jimmy’s unit came under fire and he was hit a total of seven times by machine gun fire. He suffered a fractured femur, damaged calf and damaged sciatic nerve.

Team BRIT has revealed its fully liveried, full-spec Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT4 and announced plans for an assault on a selection of Blue Ribbon races in 2018.

The team’s drivers live with a range of disabilities. Many are injured troops, some are amputees, and in September 2017 the team opened its doors to civilian drivers to widen opportunities and to promote its ‘Believe and Achieve’ ethos.

Drivers use the hand control technology, designed and developed by the team’s founder, Dave Player, along with experts, MME Motorsport.

The controls mean that the drivers with a range of requirements, such as Ash Hall who is a double leg amputee, and Jimmy can compete in the same team, switching between adapted and conventional controls.

More experienced drivers will move up to GT racing, using the same controls which have been installed in the team’s Aston Martin.

Jimmy will be looking to impress the team’s management to make his way into the driver line-up for the first GT race.

Jimmy said: “We’re all thrilled to be able to reveal our Aston Martin to the world and to show that we want to be taken seriously as real competitors.

“All of the team’s drivers and management live by our ethos of ‘Believe and Achieve’. We want to show disabled people all over the world that anything is possible – if we can reach this level of competitive motor racing with determination and fantastic support, we hope that others will be encouraged to push their own boundaries.

“The move to GT racing will be a huge achievement for us, and I will do everything I can to get on the GT team this year.”

The team’s two Fun Cup cars begin racing when the championship kicks off on April 7 at Oulton Park.