Hearing that Mondello Park had no official lap record for a production car made Conor Twomeydetermined to make his mark
You cannot even begin to imagine my joy upon hearing that Mondello Park had no official lap record for a production car of any sort. It seems nobody has driven a street car around the track against the stopwatch - at least officially - which means that finally, I had found my chance to make my name in the world of motor racing.
I immediately called up the folks at Mazda Ireland, who already have a close relationship with Mondello, and asked if they'd like to get involved. Naturally, they loved the idea, and were going to send down a Mazda3 MPS for the job, too, but, upon hearing that I was doing the driving, they coughed politely, told me something would definitely be possible and quickly got off the phone.
A few days (of being bombarded with phone calls) later, Mazda called back to say that, yes, I could do the driving, but they were sending a professional driver along to make sure everything went smoothly. Very diplomatic, of course. After some impressive brooding and sulking I finally caved in and agreed to the new format, but I knew this was more than just a lap record now: I was also about to find out just how good a driver I really was. I was about to be lined up against a talented young driver and the stopwatch would judge who was better. Let me rephrase: the stopwatch would tell me just how slow I am.
The day of the record attempt proved to be blustery and cold, with sporadic rain showers - not ideal conditions. My mood didn't improve when I met Peter Dempsey, the young driver poised to dash my hopes and embarrass me in front of my colleagues and peers. Not only is he ridiculously pleasant and easy-going, he's also baby-faced, energetic and weighs about as much as my hair, so he was making me feel old, lazy and fat as well as everything else.
The son of an ex-racer and karting since age eight, Peter enjoyed a brilliant open-wheel debut at Kirkistown in 2004 when he took pole and victory in both races. He's won at Brands Hatch, Silverstone and Mondello, and in his 2005 season took 33 victories, 33 fastest laps, 18 pole positions, three championships and was Motorsport Ireland's Young Driver of the Year. Since then, he's been raising his profile and generating sponsorship to fund a move into the higher echelons. As today is my great test, 2008 will be his.
To preserve the car and limit the possibility of my sending it into a wall, we're each allowed only one out lap, one hot lap and one cool-down lap and we only get two attempts at setting the fastest lap. I was to go first, as we had agreed, but I needed a few instruction laps to learn the lines and familiarise myself with the layout. I've driven the whole track in stages before, but never in its 3.5km entirety. Once the timing gear was ready I donned my helmet and headed nervously out on to the track. This was it. Sink or swim time.
I must confess I was a lot more nervous than I had expected to be. I assumed it would be a case of jump in, hare around, arrive back into the pits in a hail of champagne and adulation, but the reality is very daunting. As I drive around on my warm-up lap I'm desperately trying to build up a database of braking points, gear-shift points, turn-in points. I'm trying to remember all the wise words of the many race instructors I've driven with in the past: look up the track, not at the corner; "push" the wheel, don't pull it; slow-in, fast out . . . it's a lot to compute and I have less than two minutes to decide how to drive before my hot lap commences.
I round Dunlop bend and aim for the Start/Finish straight, foot to the floor in second gear as the Mazda's turbo spools up and I'm catapulted down the track. Third gear, fourth gear and I'm still on the throttle and as I flash by the pit wall I'm suddenly very aware of just how fast I'm going. Stay to the right, aim for the left, brake hard just after the bridge, I remind myself, but the sight of a hairpin approach at well over 160km/h causes me to lose my nerve and brake too early. I crawl around turn one, all the while cursing my lack of bravery.
As I head for turn two, I take a moment to reflect on what I'm actually doing. I look at my hands and feel and notice there's none of the sense of urgency and industry that you get with professional drivers on a mission. I deduce from this that I mustn't be pushing the car hard enough so once I hit the exit of turn three I decide to get a little more aggressive.
For the first time in my lap, the tyres are howling and I'm hard on the throttle much earlier than in practice. I come thundering into the off-camber "Discover Ireland" bend as fast as I dare which, it turned out, is about 20km/h too fast.
I do my best to wrestle the Mazda around the corner but with the stability control off and the back end skipping about nervously under braking there's nothing left for me to do but shed as much speed as possible before landing it in the grass. Although the excursion is brief I am able to get back out and finish my lap; it just means that the first ever official lap record was way off what it should have been. My time of two minutes and 14 seconds is a long way from the unofficial two minutes benchmark I was optimistically hoping for.
As soon as I get back, Dempsey is in the car and away and, despite having never driven a road car on the track before, he is pushing to the limits within two corners.
A mere two minutes and seven seconds later he crosses the line, having worked the car so hard the brakes are still on fire after his cool-down lap. My lap record is already history.
With pride very much at stake now, I was utterly determined to show what I could do on my second hot lap and took to the track with the proverbial bit between my teeth. All through the warm-up lap I focused on remembering lines, recalling what the instructor had told me as well as processing new advice from Peter about sticking to third and fourth gear and letting the turbo do the work for me. As I flash past the timing beacon for my second hot lap I'm so determined to put in a good showing I temporarily take leave of my senses and wait until the 150m mark to brake for turn one.
Once again, I've overcooked it and the car, incapable of shedding enough speed for the corner, slides headlong into the gravel.
Once again, I re-emerge onto the track, but there's so much gravel jammed into the underside of the car it has to go into the garage to be shovelled out. Not only am I embarrassed and disappointed, I'm also stunned at just how badly I'm coping with the pressure.
Thankfully, the Gods were smiling on me that day because we had forgotten to swap transponders so my last, disastrous run didn't count. With one more chance to save face, I decided to forget the record, forget Dempsey and drive within my limits to ensure I didn't end up in the grass or gravel or anything else that might impede my progress. Like a wall, say.
I post an official time of 2.10.960, respectable enough, considering my battered confidence and obvious lack of talent. It was some way off the impressive 2.06.615 that Peter posted immediately afterwards but I take comfort in the statistics: although more than four seconds a lap slower (enough to get lapped in the course of a 32-lap race), mathematically I'm only 3.3 per cent slower than a professional driver, which sounds a lot more impressive when thrown casually into conversation.
And I'm also the first person to set a lap record in a production car around Mondello - even if Dempsey wouldn't let me have it for any more than eight glorious minutes.