How This Man Became a Pro Racer After Losing a Leg in Afghanistan

Sgt. Liam Dwyer (right) exercises at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2013.

Yoon S. Byun/Boston Globe via Getty

When he first began adjusting to life as an amputee, Marine Staff Sgt. Liam Dwyer wanted nothing more than to get back to driving a stick shift. Dwyer’s most cherished possession was a souped-up Nissan 350Z, which he often drove in rally races and autocross events before his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan. But after an IED severed most of his left leg in May 2011, military doctors informed him that he would never again use a clutch, since he now lacked the ability to feel the pedal beneath a foot. The stubborn Dwyer vowed to prove that he could once again shift gears with ease.

Liam Dwyer. Mazda

Three years later, Dwyer is doing far more than simply operating his Nissan’s manual transmission. He’s flourishing as rookie on the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge racing circuit, where he already has one win. Like the celebrated Alex Zanardi, who won several European touring-car races after losing both his legs in a 2001 crash, Dwyer has succeeded in large part due to his grit and outsized talent. But he also credits an ingenious bit of hardware hacking for greatly aiding his cause.

Dwyer’s path toward a professional driving career began in November 2011, when a friend bought him a ticket to an amateur vintage-car race in Virginia. There he met a wealthy driver named Dave Thomas, who invited Dwyer to visit the pits and check out his team’s equipment. “They had these data systems in their cars, which tell them based on GPS where they’re braking and what their lines are,” recalls Dwyer. “And I’m going through all this data and I tell them, ‘Looks like you guys can pick up time here and here and here.’” Thomas was so impressed by Dwyer’s obvious prowess that he decided to offer him a chance to race.

Thomas’s initial plan was to modify a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite so Dwyer could operate the clutch with some sort of hand-operated lever. The team ultimately opted for a far more low-tech approach: They merely attached Dwyer’s prosthetic leg to the clutch with a Velcro loop, then trusted him to have an instinctual sense of when to apply and remove pressure based on the feel of the car.

Dwyer celebrates with teammates at the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Street Tuner race at Lime Rock in June. Mazda

Dwyer performed splendidly in the Austin-Healey Sprite, even winning a race at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. He parlayed that success into an opportunity to race in the National Auto Sport Association’s Spec Z class, which holds events on major tracks such as New York’s Watkins Glen. This new circuit’s more powerful cars tended to shake Dwyer’s prosthesis off the clutch, however, so he searched for a better way to secure himself to the pedal.

The prosthetics lab at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center eventually used a 3D printer to create a bracket shaped precisely like Dwyer’s ersatz foot. This bracket was then attached to the clutch, so that the foot didn’t slip as much when fastened in place with Velcro.

This past January, the professional racing team Freedom Autosport invited Dwyer to Florida to audition for a driving job. Though Dwyer proved his savvy during numerous test runs in a spec Mazda Miata, there were concerns about his ability to exit the vehicle. The Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge requires that teams switch drivers at least once per race; losing a few seconds during that transition can mean the difference between first place and tenth. Even if Dwyer could bounce out of the car quickly, his custom 3D-printed clutch bracket would cause problems for the next driver.

An elegant yet simple piece of innovation proved to be the key to making Dwyer’s new career possible. Eric Arms, of the Freedom Autosport crew, attached a heim joint to the bottom of Dwyer’s prosthesis. This joint fits snugly with a small metal rod that Arms welded onto the clutch pedal’s left side. When it’s time to switch drivers, Dwyer releases the joint by pulling on a cable that snakes up his leg toward his hip. When his teammate hops into the driver’s seat of the team’s Mazda MX-5, then, he can use the clutch as usual.

The joint, shown as it connects to the pedal. Freedom Autosport

Dwyer, who made his professional debut at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif., in May, worked hard to perfect the art of extricating himself from a car’s cockpit. Stopping the vehicle and vaulting through the window took him upward of 45 seconds when he joined Freedom Autosport in January. Now he can do it in a mere 11 seconds, a time that compares favorably with that of able-bodied drivers.

That sort of quick exiting was integral to the highlight of Dwyer’s season so far, a first-place finish at the Northeast Grand Prix during Memorial Day Weekend. The win was especially gratifying for Dwyer because it took place on his home track, Connecticut’s Lime Rock Park, where he used to race his Nissan 350Z for kicks before heading to Afghanistan.

Dwyer hasn’t been able to participate in a full slate of this season’s races due to his continuing commitment to the Marines; he remains on active duty and spends four to five hours a day in grueling physical rehab. In fact, the Marines were wary of letting Dwyer race at all. “They told me, ‘This is dangerous, you’re going to get hurt,’” says Dwyer. “And I was like, ‘You’re the ones who sent me to Afghanistan, a place where I almost got killed, and you’re worried about me getting into a car accident?’”

Fortunately for racing fans, the unassailable logic of Dwyer’s rebuttal won the day.