Stephen Daly in the fast lane

It was one of those days that Stephen Daly will never forget. It was the summer of 2007 and the young Dunshaughlin man experienced something that was a revelation to him.

A passionate follower of motorsport he finally got an opportunity to drive a racing car in a practice run around a proper circuit in Kirkistown, Co Down that year. He was 16 and he would never be the same again.

The car, he recalls now, was a Formula Ford 1600. He and his father, Dan Daly, had acquired it when it was “an old wreck.”

With his father’s guidance young Stephen spent hours doing it up until the day it was ready to be taken on a practice run.

“I fixed the car up, it was kind of a little project for myself. I fixed it up after school and got it all running and looking pretty. I took it out for its first run and, my God, it was an awesome experience,” he explained.

“The experience was like nothing you could ever imagine. Driving a fast car on the road is one thing, but when you are travelling in something that is quarter the weight it’s something else completely.

“A race car has maybe only half the power of a road car, but the power-to-weight ratio is awesome. Driving at speeds of up to 120 mph for the first time is incredible, you never forget it.

“It was a life-changing thing, oh yeah. It was like a child who goes with his Dad in a fast car then, suddenly, he’s on his own in a single seater, it was unknown territory.

“It was just so quick I remember I only got up to half throttle going down the straight. I thought this thing is quicker than a Formula One. I loved the buzz, the smell the engine gave off, everything about it. There was no going back.”

Little has happened in the intervening years to diminish Stephen Daly’s love for motorsport.

These days he lives in Gloucester city close to Cheltenham. He works nearby in Dukesbury as an engineer with Halliburton an American multi-national corporation that, according to its website, offers “an array of products for the oil-drilling industry.”

At weekends there is little Daly likes better than to travel to an event with his car and take on his rivals as well as the unique challenges presented by each track.

He has driven – and enjoyed plenty of success - in just about all the big tracks in Ireland and England – Mondello Park, Kirkistown, Brands Hatch, Donnington Park, Silverstone.

In 2015 he was a monthly winner in the Meath Chronicle/Cusack Hotel Group Sportsperson of the Year awards after he took the coveted Leinster Trophy at Mondello for the second successive year. It was something equivalent, in football terms, to winning the Sam Maguire for two years in-a-row.

Other triumphs have been achieved since including a very notable victory in a Formula Ford race at Zandvoort, Holland last May where the young Dunshaughlin man burned off many of the top Formula Ford 1600 drivers in Europe to go home with the coveted Marcel Albers Memorial Trophy.

Guiding a high-powered, light-weight car around a track in a competitive race demands lots of qualities – concentration, anticipation, courage all mixed in with a dash of the daredevil.

Daly would appreciate the observation of former Formula One driver Mario Andretti when he said: “If you have everything under control you’re not moving fast enough.”

When asked what attracts him most to the sport Daly paused to find an answer.

He is well aware that there are those who cannot comprehend what attraction can be found in driving a relatively expensive car (his model his worth £20,000) endlessly around a track.

“I think it’s the adrenalin, it’s the urge to win. It’s hard to quantify in a few words. People looking at me from the outside might think why would you spend large amounts of money on cars racing, you’re just driving around in a circuit.”

“It’s a very difficult thing to explain, but you can go back to that very first time I drove a racing car; it’s the adrenalin, it’s the buzz that it gives you, it’s the drive to win, it’s hard to describe it.”

One thing Stephen Daly is certain about is that engines - how they work, how they are constructed - has fascinated him all his life.
His father Dan runs a garage close to the County Club in Dunshaughlin and it was there Stephen spent much of his youth; learning about the mysteries of the internal combustion engine.

He studied aircraft systems in Carlow IT before moving to Cranfield University near Milton Keynes where he studied for a masters in gas turbine technology.

He subsequently landed a job at the Halliburton plant and is working on specialised drilling equipment that can delve down to depths of 30,000 or 40,000 feet, deep into the earth.

“It’s the same height as an aircraft flies but we’re drilling into the ground for similar distances,” Daly adds to underline his point.

When he talks about racing Daly uses the term “we” rather than just “I” – and there’s a good reason for that.
Out there on the track in the high-speed, helter-skelter of a race he is not driving just for himself. He’s doing it also for his team – and that means the Daly clan.

His supporting cast is made up of family members all of whom, he says, have been “bitten by the bug.”
There’s his father and mother, Dan and Joy for starters. Then there are brothers Mark and Michael and his uncles John Daly and Martin Daly who rarely miss any of his races.

Also among the list of assistants is Stephen’s partner Elena, an Italian and a mechanical engineer who needs little encouragement to get involved in the complicated process of getting the car ready for racing.

“In the past few years we’ve been really showing our stuff, we’ve been up there with the best of the drivers in Europe and beating them, so it’s fantastic.

“We had the victory in Holland which was great, we went over there following the BRSCC (British Racing and Sports Car Club) championships.

“ If I said I was going to race in Australia in the morning they would follow me out there,” he says with a real sense of gratitude.

“It’s such a competitive environment to be in, but I love to go fast, I love winning and it’s such a disappointment for the team when you are only finishing down the order, you want to be on the podium and win these races. It’s such a buzz when you get it right.”

There was a time when Stephen Daly dreamed of driving in Formula One. He discovered reality - cruel, harsh reality - has an irritating way of impinging on dreams.

Driving at Formula Ford level can be expensive, but to make the next step up to Formula Three would, he points out, require an extra half-million pounds – at least.

To move up to Formula Two would demand a few more spare million on top of that and Formula One is , well , another world – only for those with a bottomless well of funds.

That does not mean Stephen can’t be ambitious and seek to be the best racing driver he can be.

He knows of many high-quality drivers who sought to break the glass ceiling only to return to Formula Ford, their dreams of the really big time dashed. That, in turn, has led to super competitive Formula Ford level.

“My ambitions are always high. I’d love to be moving forward, the win in Holland this year has given me a massive incentive to move forward, to go out and see if I can win more races. Get up through the classes and maybe get into a single seater racing somewhere in Europe or Asia or possibly even America, we’ll see,” he concluded.

For the moment Stephen is content to chase glory in his Formula Ford 1600 burning up the rubber as he hits speeds of up to 130 mph. With 130hp and only 400 kilos it is well capable of doing just that.

For him there’s nothing like the buzz of going out there in his racing car and flying around some track or other – it’s been like that since that day in 2007.

The day when he knew there would be no turning back.