Dear Melanie,
Would you like to be a Hollywood stunt driver for the day?
I had just received the most exciting email ever. Finally, opportunity knocked. All those years of drama school had paid off and word obviously had spread about my legendary driving ability. I had arrived. Or maybe not...
Turns out a few of us ‘car folk’ received invitations to go down to Mondello Park to learn how to stunt drive and gain an insight into driving like Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Conner the main characters of the Fast & Furious movies. The stunt-driving event had been organised to celebrate the release of Fast & Furious 7, in Irish cinemas from April 3rd.
We would be given expert tuition and learn how to perform car stunts and then do a timed lap of a specially designed stunt driving course. I was giddy with excitement.
On the morning of the stunt driving, I had a few things racing (pun intended) around my head. Filming would take place of the event, so I needed to wear something slimming. Black. Black is good for film, after all, the camera adds ten pounds; it has nothing to do with the pounds of cake that I eat, obvs! Secondly, as our Road Test Editor Dave Humphreys is the fastest motoring journalist in Ireland (no, seriously, he is), so I was under pressure. I had to do well for the CompleteCar.ie team, to keep up our winning reputation, plus I hate losing. I mean really hate it. I am the definition of competitive, yet with all the losing I do you would think I would have lost my competitive edge, but oh no.
As soon as I arrived at Mondello Park, I could hear the frantic skidding of tyres and the buzzing of revving engines. It was then I saw the stunt car, the iconic Mazda MX-5. The first thing I thought was ‘light’ and ‘rear-wheel drive’; were we going to learn to drift? Oh, please say yes, please say yes! I beamed from ear to ear at this thought.
However, as soon as I got into the room my glee dissipated. There was Gabby McDonald, the youngest and fastest Irish drag racer and standing beside her were three very experienced motoring journalists whose job it is to drive and who do this sort of thing all the time. Not fair! How am I ever going to compete against these? I’m never going to be the fastest. The fear of making an absolute show of myself hit me hard, but I shut those feelings down with a fist full of biscuits. Oh, they were for everybody? My bad.
I watched as each driver took to the track. I tried to learn from their mistakes. They made no mistakes. Lap after lap, strategically placed road cones remained upright and nobody had flipped the car. Great, I bet I’ll be the first so.
After an agonising wait, watching how good everybody else was, it was finally my turn to get into the Mazda. I fell into the driver seat. The thing is so low it's like sitting on a futon. I could hardly see over the steering wheel. And, balls! It was a manual. I’m really out of practice driving stick and I was not looking forward to getting the feel for the shift as I was trying to keep a skidding car under control. But, Ken Elliot, Chief Driving Instructor at Mondello, told me that the car would be in first gear all the way. Phew. That was one obstacle I wouldn’t have to worry about.
Ken told me to get comfortable and asked me if I could reach the clutch. I said ‘which one is the clutch’. Then I laughed, manically (a combination of my own fear and the joy I get from instilling fear in others) and told him to relax I was only playing with him. He fiddled nervously with the ‘kill switch’; I couldn’t tell if the kill switch was for the car or me.
Right, first we were going to learn how to do a forward slalom, then a 90-degree handbrake turn, then a donut. I nodded, as If I knew what he was talking about. I pulled away from the starting line like a bat out of hell; one thing I do like is speed. I like to go fast. I nipped around those first four cones no problem. I like to think it was all to do with me, but in fairness, I’m going to give a lot of credit to the Mazda. It was so light, responsive and sure-footed. It did everything I wanted it to do and with lightning fast reaction times. The car is so quick that I didn’t even notice that I hit nearly every cone during the handbrake turns (disclaimer: loads of cones were harmed in the making of this stunt driver).
Then came the tricky bit, the donut. You see I have dyslexia and when I hear the words ‘left’ or ‘right’ it’s like my brain stops, makes a cup of tea and says ‘ah yes, I’ve heard of those but...’ so when Ken was instructing me to turn the wheel left or right, well, let's just say things got a little messy and confusing and the car went every which way but the way it should have done. I was beginning to get a little frustrated not for any other reason than I was embarrassed and didn’t want Ken to think that I wasn’t following his instructions or that I was a moron. But then Ken told me to just relax and feel what the car was doing. He said you would feel when the car starts to skid and you will naturally know when you take your foot off the throttle and when to put it back on in order to come out of the skid.
And, you know what, the expert was right. By the end of my practice I may have hit every cone on the course, and never actually made it around the course fully, but I was naturally looking where I wanted the car to go, which meant my hands instinctively followed and turned the right (or was it left?) way, and I began to master the clutch and throttle to donut around the cone and come out of the skid to hoof it down the corridor of cones at full pelt and bring the car to an assertive stop.
Then Ken said the words 'start the clock' and where my competitive edge would usually kick in, this time it didn’t, well at least not with anyone but myself. I was determined to make it around the full course in the correct order. I was not going to hit one cone and I was going to do each manoeuvre exactly as Ken so patiently taught me to. I was going to beat myself, nobody else. When I finished I was so happy. I had made it. I had done the course and I had done it right, but not only that I was in third place. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was I a good stunt driver I was a fast one too.
I got a huge cheer as I got out of the car and was told I was bloody fearless out there, and you know what? I was fearless. I was having too much fun to be afraid of anything. I was listening intently to Ken, trying to pick up as many skills as I could to make myself a better driver that I had no time to be afraid. But, I am naturally a fan of speed. I like to drive fast when I can, but out on the congested streets of Dublin I don’t very often get the chance to put the throttle down, whereas here Ken actually had to tell me to take my foot off the throttle. My response, ‘but I like it full throttle’.
I also managed to get the car to drift. The folks watching my lap said they could see me improve after each go and I was getting the car to drift nicely on my last few laps. However, I was having too much fun inside the car to notice! Oh well, just means I have to come back and have another go. And I cannot wait.
So after all that, did I get a feel for the Fast & Furious movie and the stunt driving the actors do? Hell yes! And now I want to be a stunt driver. It is so much fun. At the end of the day I was most definitely fast, but more fervent than furious.
Here are some of Ken Elliot’s expert stunt driving tips, but obviously don’t try these out on the roads. Go down to Mondello and give them a go there:
1: Slow in and fast out of corners. By doing this, you are controlling the car rather than letting it control you. It's always more important to carry speed out of a corner than into it.
2: Get your steering done before applying the power; you can control a rear end slide on the throttle but if the front starts to slide you have to come off the power to get it back.
3: Be smooth with both the steering and power application, by doing this it gives the car less work to do so it makes you faster and gives you more control.