By Aisling McCarthy

Perel started his racing career at the age of 15 and by the time he was 23, he had five Provincial and National Championship titles under his belt. A year later, he gave up on his racing dreams due to a lack of funding – a common issue within the competitive motorsports world.

He partnered up with his brother, Marc, and set up a web company called Obox, which offers user-friendly themes and add-ons to blogging sites such as WordPress, Tumblr and Envato.

Where did the idea for Obox come from?

Marc and I started Obox two years after I left school. We were working for our dad at his software company, as programmers, but decided we wanted to do our own thing.

For years, we floated around doing custom websites but it wasn't until 2008, where we discovered the world of video blogging, that our business took off.

We started a vlog called From the Couch which was a daily show where we spoke about the tech world. It peaked at 40 000 viewers per month and was the launchpad of our WordPress template business.

Obox offers themes and add-ons to WordPress and Tumblr. What made you want to offer these kinds of services to online businesses, freelancers and writers using these platforms?

We just went with the flow, there was no overarching strategy because the industry was so young at the time. Our primary aim was to be on every platform that offered templates and, to this day, we are one of the only companies in the world that offer templates for WordPress, Tumblr and our own framework.

After 5 years of working on your online business, you returned to racing for Bonaldi Lamborghini in the Italian GT. Did you expect your return to racing to be so successful?

No not at all, I expected to do one race and then get back to normal life. But my performance at my "one off" race convinced some people around me that I had the potential to become a professional racing driver and from there it's been a tough but incredibly fast climb up the racing ladder.

What does your nomination for the 2016 SAGMJ/Bridgestone Motor Sportsman of the Year Award mean to you?

It's always an honour to be recognised for my achievements overseas. I aspire to make my country proud, so it means a lot to me when I'm noticed for my efforts.

How important do you think these awards are to the motoring community?

I think they're only as valuable as the marketing done around it. The more they're spoken about the better but, right now, I don't think that's the case. The first time I heard of the SAGMJ Awards was in 2015 when I was nominated for the first time. So I think more can be done to emphasise the event.

Since having signed a 3-year contact with the official Ferrari world championship team, Kessel Racing, what are your plans for Obox?

I am able to work on Obox from anywhere in the world, provided I have a wi-fi connection. So I can race and run the business with my brother at the same time.

We still have huge ambitions for Obox. I am responsible for setting the vision of the company and making sure that plan is executed. Right now we are working on some big updates and product offerings for our customers which we believe will take it up a few levels.

Our focus has always been on what our users want. We try to anticipate a lot of their needs and build them into our products as quickly as possible. This year we plan on doing much of the same.

Now that our Layers product stable it's about slow and steady iteration. We want Obox to be around for decades, we are in it for the long haul. Patience and not rushing is key to that.

For more information, visit www.davidperel.net.

Want to know more about SAGMJ’s role in the SAGMJ/Bridgestone Motor Sportsman of the Year Awards? Read more in our article, SAGMJ and its importance for journalists: a Q&A with Eugene Herbert.