Ulcerative Colitis

But he found a doctor in Vienna who used a different treatment than he had had in the United States, and a year and a half ago he was declared cured.

The challenge of the disease, plus the trials of coming to Europe to live alone at 19 to learn racing, has more than prepared Speed for his latest mission.

"I was very unlucky and lucky at the same time that I got this disease that pretty much knocked me out for two years," Speed said in an interview in Bahrain last weekend.

"My competitiveness and my determination and stubbornness is what kept me going to where I am." Speed won multiple karting titles in the United States, trained at the Jim Russell racing school and raced in the Barber Dodge series in 2002, the same year that he won the driver program of the energy drink company Red Bull to lift an American to Formula One, awarding him a budget to learn racing in Europe.

After a difficult year in British Formula 3, he won both the German and European Renault series in 2004, while suffering from the disease.

Speed's manager, Glen Hinshaw, a semiprofessional cyclist who trains with him, compared his determination to that of Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong.

Last year, he finished third in the GP2 support series and drove a Red Bull in practice at the Canadian and U.S.

Grand Prix.

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