Netflix’s Formula One documentary Drive to Survive has attracted millions of views - but Samuel Oram-Jones cannot bring himself to be one of them.
“All the Drive to Survive stuff? I can’t watch it,” he says. “It just kills me, because I should be there. I can’t watch it at all.”
As a kid, Oram-Jones went wheel to wheel with the likes of George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and new world champion Max Verstappen on the karting circuit.
He still classes Alex Albon as a good friend and was close to Lance Stroll growing up.
“You name the driver, I’ve competed against them,” he says. “And I’ve beaten several of them.
“I was way better than Mazepin!” He jokes.
Oram-Jones was a two-time winner of the Lewis Hamilton True Grit award and received on-track advice from the seven-time world champion who he dreamed of emulating.
He was part of the McLaren Young Driver programme, did simulator work with Red Bull and was the youngest ever invitee to the Formula BMW Talent Cup, aged just 13.
“I did pretty well,” he reflects. “The last time I competed in karting I put it on P2 in Spain. P1 was Callum Illott who has been winning in F2, George Russell was P5 and he’s in F1.
“There’s several guys I’ve been toe to toe with, in the same team, under the same roof. I was just as good as them and now they’re doing different things.”
As those he competed with rose through the ranks in pursuit of their Formula One dreams, Oram-Jones stepped away from motor racing for “educational reasons”.
“The decision was made for me I guess,” he admits. “It wasn’t really made by me, but I needed to go to University, which is what I did.
“In order to be around for the family business later in life, I needed a certain level of education.
“At the time, it was a big shame for me - I’d done sports my whole life and every day was about racing until the day it wasn’t any more. That was a big challenge in my life.”
After leaving motorsport behind, Oram-Jones enrolled at Durham University to embark upon a degree in Business and Management.
When he arrived at Durham, there was a gaping hole to be filled by sport. He rocked up at the annual Fresher’s Fayre with dreams of competing in Varsity.
“I ended up randomly, for no particular reason whatsoever, going to the tryouts for American Football,” he recalls.
“I thought, I don’t know the rules, I’ve never played it before, but these guys seem cool, why not.
“But I nearly didn’t go to the tryout. I had work, that got cancelled, so I just managed to go along and never looked back I guess.”
When he arrived at try-outs, Oram-Jones was taken under the wing of two American running backs on scholarships at Durham.
Former Harvard star Seitu Smith and Lincoln University running back John Taggart both spotted his potential, whilst he found strange similarities with life as a racing driver.
“There’s definitely similarities the way I think about it, especially running the football,” he explains. “I’m just trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible and avoid anything in my way.
“In a sense, the whole depth perception and perception of objects moving around you is really similar with racing and American Football. Especially because I’m wearing a helmet, in my space.
“Go from one point to another, know where I’m supposed to be and get there as fast as I can - the same deal as motor racing.”
After Taggart tore his ACL, Oram-Jones was fast-tracked to getting more opportunities before helping Durham to win the BUCS National Championship in his second year, scoring the game-winning touchdown.
A year later, he attended a Pro Football Hall of Fame International Camp in America and attracted interest from Division 2 College teams.
However, he was assured by a coach he had the ability to play Division One College Football and took the advice to finish his degree and look to walk-on to a team whilst studying a post-graduate degree.
A few months later, Oram-Jones was on a plane to Nashville, Tennessee having been hard at work writing emails alongside finishing his studies.
“I made a big directory on Excel of every single college team and emailed every single coach, literally in college football.
“You could go to almost any coach and if they search my name in their email, it will be there somewhere.”
When he arrived and enrolled at Vanderbilt University to study a Masters in Financial Mathematics, he had received no response from the football programme.
“So I just turned up at their doorstep,” he says. “I just said, ‘Hey, I’ve been emailing you guys, this is my name, this is who I am, I’m trying to walk-on here. I believe I can bring value to this team, I’ll do anything I can to bring value to this team, trust me it’ll be worth your while’.”
The response was not what he had hoped for. He was told they already had their numbers for the season, and they would maybe call back a few months later.
“I was like, ‘OK, that’s not good’,” he admits. “But I didn’t tell anyone about it, didn’t tell my parents or anything because I knew I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”
Still determined to find an opening, he rocked up to Tennessee Titans pre-season to watch the NFL team prepare for their new campaign.
He jumped over a fence to speak to head coach Mike Vrabel. With no contacts in the United States, it was one of his only hopes to get noticed.
“I was just trying to put myself out there,” he says. “I told him I’m a British champion, I believe I’m the best the UK has to offer in my position, how can I get from my position to where your guys are?”
Vrabel told him he needed to get college film and needed to speak to the Vanderbilt head coach, otherwise it was never going to work.
“I said thank you very much for you advice.”
Back at Vanderbilt, Oram-Jones found a gap in a fence where he could watch the team practice, and calculated what time they would finish and when coaches would leave.
He also figured out which door in the facility the coaches used, and eventually waited around to stop head coach Derek Mason as he drove home at 11:30pm.
Short on time, Mason told him to come back in the morning and Oram-Jones happily obliged.
“I’d never seen anything like this in my life,” he recalls. “A football only facility like that. I’d just finally got a toe in the door.”
Mason was, at first, hesitant before eventually agreeing to give him a tryout the following week as his team prepared for their season-opener against Georgia.
“It was like an NFL workout,” Oram-Jones says. “There were like 15 coaches watching and just me and they put me through so much on the day.
“Every route, every drill, twice over, no break. Since I’ve been in football I’ve never done anything like that again.
“After every run, the coach would look back at me like, ‘you good?’ And I’d say, ‘yes sir, I’m sweet’. I found out from coaches later on in the year that they were just trying to break me so I’d leave them alone.”
Break him they did not, and eventually he received an email almost two weeks later asking to meet him at the facility.
Oram-Jones was told he would be able to join the team as a scout team player, someone who carries out the upcoming opponents’ game plan to prepare the starting line-up.
He had no chance of appearing In any games and would not even be in kit for matches. The weight room and training room was out of bounds, and he would not even be listed on their roster online. But he could train.
“Obviously that sounds like a horrible deal,” he admits. “But at this point in time I have no chips in my corner to bargain with, so I’m like, ‘sweet, I’m in’.”
Over the first few weeks, Oram-Jones patiently waited for his chance and never even saw the training field before injuries saw him thrust into action.
As the season drew to a close, he won the Scout Team Player of the Week on a number of occasions and was promised an open competition for the team the following year.
It soon became clear he faced a similar situation and, after entering the NCAA transfer portal, narrowed his next choice down to two huge teams - the USC Trojans and Florida Gators.
He eventually enrolled at USC for a Masters in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where a broken leg suffered in practice the week of the opening game ruined his first year on the team.
“I came back from that and then this year I wished there were more opportunities to play,” he admits. “But they brought in some transfers at running back and the coach was happy with his options so it was a lot of practice for me.
“I ended up winning the USC Scout Team Player of the Year award on offence which is good, goes on my football resume.”
From picking up American Football at Durham University, he found himself running out at the famous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in front of tens of thousands of fans as he kitted up for games later in the year.
“It’s interesting,” he says. “Because two years ago or three years ago just to dress for a team would’ve seemed unbelievable.
“I thought, ‘I can’t even imagine how cool that would be’. I travelled to San Francisco with work back when I was 18 or 19 and remember thinking, ‘can you imagine just being part of one of these teams one day’.
“But being here, the closer you get to achieving that goal, that means you push the goal further away. Now that I’m here, standing on the sidelines is no longer enough for me.
“The atmosphere was incredible and being part of the big programme was incredible, but I can’t lie I wanted to do more.
"I battled through injury, I’ve had to battle through stuff on my own with other running backs out with injury that no one player would ever be expected to do, running the scout team without any other running backs to rep through.
“The team is grateful for that, I’ll always be part of the team here now, and I have an award here now that nobody will ever be able to take away from me.
“I’m hoping those experiences are going to help me now as I go into the off-season and look into next season.”
Oram-Jones has now officially declared for the 2022 NFL Draft, and will soon head to South Florida to step up his preparations.
“Pete Mumbreo is one of the most famous draft prep guys in the country,” he explains. “He’s had everyone from Ezekiel Elliott, Rob Gronkowski, Odell Beckham, Tyreek Hill - you name them, I’ve been training next to them here
“That’s kind of what’s shown me I can really play this game at this level, because I train with these guys every day, for half the year in my off-season, and I can run with them. I know I can do it.”
He has also been fortunate enough to be mentored by legendary running back Frank Gore, the third all-time leading rusher in NFL history.
“Frank Gore really took me under his wing, I’ve been really fortunate with that,” he says. “He thinks I’m a good player, he thinks I can play and, for me, he’s a fantastic judge of guys.
“Last year, when he was preparing for the Jets, we’d train at the facility Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings then on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons just me and him would do a private workout with his trainer.
“We’d go and run together on Saturday and Sunday mornings so we were running seven days a week. I’m younger so my conditioning is sweet and I keep him where he wants to be.
“Then he has the expertise and the knowledge, his footwork is still insane, to push me. I’m so lucky for that, and he’s been a real mentor for me.
“I’ve stepped up big time in terms of running back movements and speed just by being with him because his knowledge is insane.”
Oram-Jones is realistic and knows that the chances of hearing his name called at the NFL Draft are extremely slim.
Instead, he is focused on putting up the best numbers he can as the USC Pro Day and other events in front of scouts with the view to landing a try-out with an NFL team as an undrafted free agent.
“My goal is to just get a foot in a door,” he says.
“The main thing is it’s been incredibly tough trying to get coaches to notice or care about what I do.
“There’s a lot of guys been lucky to come from Europe, say with the International Player Pathway programme.
“But nobody has ever really played University in the UK then gone to play College in the US. They’ve always gone to high school first or gone to the NFL programme.
“Everything I’ve done has just been to try and put a foot in a door or force a foot through a door and go from there.
“If I get an opportunity I’ll make it happen by any means necessary. I’m not quitting, for sure.
“A lot of people say, if that doesn’t work out, what are you going to do - but I’m not giving up on anything. The NFL is the goal.
“I’ll tell the coaches I’ll come and work out for a team for free - I just want to play.”
As he pursues his NFL dream, Oram-Jones still wonders what could have been on the race track when he sees familiar faces in Formula One.
He recalls driving for the Intrepid karting team in Italy and facing off against members of the Dutch national team.
“In the end, I was so much quicker than the other two guys they just sent me and Charles Leclerc out to have a race together, and he just beat me over the line by two tenths,” he recalls.
“Now he’s the No.1 driver at Ferrari, and I play American Football - it’s certainly a wild one!”
Wild is one word for it - but Oram-Jones’ foot remains firmly on the gas pedal in pursuit of his new NFL dream.