Draft Mistral

The Draft racing chair comes from over a decade of quiet research and evolution leading to international acclaim as one of the best racing wheelchairs available in the world. Our racing chair has been designed to achieve that sweetspot of being fully custom built, lightweight and stiff enough, without compromising strength, performance and safety. See our racing chair gallery

Each chair is individually custom built by Dan Chambers, Company Director at Draft Wheelchairs. Over 17 years, every weld on every chair that bears the Draft name (and quite a few that don't) has been carefully executed by Dan. Each specification is carried out in a collaboration between Dan and Chris Madden, here at our workshop in Cambridgeshire. We will spend as long as you like discussing your seating position, pushing style, preferences, body shape etc along with the current trends in design and research. We usually allow 2-3 hours for an assessment, so won't be rushing you off after 30 minutes like some other manufacturers. 

Production is limited to approximately 20 chairs each year, with several months waiting time for delivery. We are a friendly, skilled craft workshop who actually enjoy meeting our clients, not a production line of anonymous welders building to faxed specification forms, while watching the clock.

Each chair begins with a blank sheet of paper, because our chairs need to be as variable and varied as our clients. An infinite number of configurations are possible from the traditional sitting position with adjustable cloth upholstery and a footplate to full solid kneelers with foot pod, solid backs, carbon seats, ratchet or kayak backs, rain tips, flag mounts etc. After an assessment (allow 2-3 hours), each chair is individually tailor-made  by us in our workshop for each client; no production lines or pre-fabrication. Clients are often asked for a fitting mid-build to allow any fine tuning to be done.

Most of our international clients book a 3 or 4 day visit to the workshop and have their chair built around them. This usually needs to be booked several months in advance. You can try your chair before we send it for spray or indeed take it away in a raw aluminium finish. All forming, fabrication, welding, wheel building and assembly is carried out in-house by Dan, Ryan and Chris, from 12 foot long raw tubing to finished product. You can meet and discuss your chair requirements with the people who actually build it, by hand, one tube at a time.

We are always interested in new ideas which our clients bring us. this way, our chairs evolve along with the sport. We always strive to fit our chairs to you, not you to our chair.  This service and attention to detail understandably takes considerably longer to deliver than a production line chair, but many world class athletes believe that it is well worth the wait.