FF1600 man Tarling’s coronavirus recovery
Historic Formula Ford battler Richard Tarling is planning a gentle return to the cockpit after recovering from Covid-19.
The 41-year-old, who was the 1999 Formula Palmer Audi champion, has earned a reputation as a tough and fast competitor on track, but the battle he faced over the opening months of this year when he contracted the disease on his return from an overseas race was tougher. The Henley-on-thames driver had been to the other side of the world to follow his racing dream and he thought it was simply the rigours of his late-january trip that had caught up with him – even though he was fully aware of what was happening on a global scale.
He explains: “I had flown back from racing at the Phillip Island Classic and we had a very busy tiring trip. I had already decided to self-isolate for a week before going back to my family just in case [it was the virus]. It started off just feeling like an extension of jetlag by being tired. I got all kinds of changing symptoms such as muscle aches, headaches, wheezing chest, my mouth felt like I’d burned it with scolding coffee.”
While it knocked him out for two weeks, the recovery process has been very slow and Tarling says that he still feels the effects now, some eight weeks since the illness was at its worst. He was in complete isolation for 14 days but sought solace from his many friends in racing
“For the two weeks I didn’t realise the time as I felt so ill,” he explains. “But lots of friends contacted me with support so I’m really grateful for that. An interesting thing is that lots of people contacted me saying they’d had it, but wanted to keep it a secret as they were worried about getting treated like they had the pox...the recovery’s slow going: in my mind I can do anything but I get really exhausted quickly but day-by-day it’s improving.”
While the return to full health might not be as fast as he would have liked, it has given Tarling plenty of time to think about his return to the race tracks in
2020. He says: “I am really looking forward to doing anything other than work or staying at home! The plan is to test for a half day and see how I feel then go from there.”