'Oh my God - I feel like a girl.' Car non-enthusiast Frank McNally goes to rally school. We've donned our Ferrari-style red overalls and are being briefed by rally school manager David Smyth when, suddenly, old insecurities return to haunt me. Growing up, I was not a normal boy. It was too embarrassing to admit to anyone, but I just had no interest in cars.
Now, the same old anxieties well up inside as Smyth starts talking about the power of the school's custom-built machines. When he mentions that one of them has a 2.4-litre engine but "revs to 9.2", there are "Ooh!" sounds all around me, while I have to try hard not to yawn. Oh my God - I feel like a girl.
It turns out this could be a good feeling. "The girls always hammer the fellas here, because they follow instructions and don't think they're already the best drivers in the world," says Smyth. This is greeted with sceptical silence around the table, and even I feel vaguely affronted. Grinning mischievously, the instructor adds that he's not putting any pressure on us, but he had a 65-year-old woman on the course recently and her hand-brake turns were exemplary. Anxiety gnaws again. I'm looking around me and I realise, for an absolute certainty, I'm the only one here who has never performed a hand-brake turn.
The circuit designers have thoughtfully placed the handbrake corner right outside the reception area, for maximum visibility. But those not immediately called to their cars head for the viewing tower, from which you can see the whole track anyway. There are no women today. The class is dominated by a group of 20-something lads from an office in Dublin. There are also two friends from Kells who got course vouchers from their girlfriends last Christmas. What kind of girlfriend encourages you to take up rally driving, I ask one, as we wait for our call. "She got a Louis Vuitton handbag," he explains.
There are a few simple principles to rallying. One is that you should forget everything you know about driving. "It's a different approach," explains Smyth. "In rallying, you're just looking at the road, and where you want to go. In normal driving, you're looking at the trees and walls and houses, and where you don't want to go."
Another rule is that you grip the steering wheel for grim life. "Feeling" the car with both hands is vital, if you want it to do what you ask, at the right time: "You have to stay ahead of it," warns Smyth. "Otherwise it'll be doing the last thing you asked it to do. And that's not good."
This all made sense back in the briefing room, but out on the track, everything is a blur. The course begins with the Ford Escort Mark II, a rallying classic described in the school brochure as "tail happy". The brochure is not exaggerating. Accelerate too soon out of a bend and you send the car spinning, every time. "No traction, no throttle," my instructor Seamus repeats like a mantra, via microphone and my helmet's sound system. But after the first couple of spins, he senses I need a more memorable image. When the car doesn't have traction, the throttle is "like a cross woman," he says: "You just don't go near it!"
After a first five-lap session wrestling with the car's moods, I climb out sweating, but relieved. Apart from a couple of 180-degree skids, neither of which was my hand-brake turn, my début has gone well. Maybe I'm a natural. I feel like shaking a bottle of champagne and spraying it on the other drivers. Then I notice that the Dublin lads are already comparing their lap times. And I realise that Seamus has not even given me lap-times.
After another stint in the Escort (quicker, but still no times) and one in the much more powerful Subaru Impreza, we break for lunch. Rallying is hard work, and you could get fit doing it. But not if you lay into the huge spread they put on here, as our class does, to a man. If Mikko Hirvonen ate like this, he wouldn't fit in his car.
David Smyth and his wife Veronica got the idea for the school when they lived in England. His job involved entertaining customers and staff, and golf days were a "headache". Rallying was fun. There's no drink involved, for obvious reasons, and it's a proven formula for corporate groups: "The overalls are a great leveller." So five years ago, back home, the Smyths plonked a track down in the rolling hills of north Monaghan, a mile outside the football-mad village of Scotstown, and called it Rally School Ireland. David's brother Malachy, a former professional rally engineer, built the cars.
The contrast between the school and its pastoral surrounds is striking. If this isn't the middle of nowhere, it's on the way there. But the business thrived, and now employs 10 full-time staff and another six to eight part-timers. It's not a cheap day out, but then it's not a cheap business. Each car goes through a set of tyres every two days, and the fastest - the Metro 6R4 - does a maximum three miles to the gallon. It also does 0-60 in three seconds. When Colin McRae drove it here last spring, he lapped in under a minute.
By the time I get back into the Escort, the seat-belts seem tighter, but so is my cornering. As the day progresses, the instructors push you harder, encouraging you to go for broke, occasionally even changing gears for you if you get too involved with the steering wheel. At the end of my third stint in the Escort, Seamus looks at his flip-chart and says: "You're getting faster!"
On the last lap of my fourth and final session in the Ford, he seems excited. I'm driving like Rubens Barrichello in a rainstorm now, my helmet banging the roll bar as I throw the car around bends and, with sharp reminders in my headset ("cross woman!"), wait just long enough to hit the throttle. The finish line is in sight - just beyond the handbrake corner - and Seamus is studying his stopwatch intently. So when I fluff the handbrake turn, and limp miserably across the finish line, he seems crestfallen. "You were heading for a 1.29 there," he says, making 1.29 sound like the impossible dream. I find out later that the others were averaging 1.25.
Before leaving, the gang from Dublin book themselves in for the same weekend next year. We all get certificates to say we've successfully completed a rallying course. From what I've seen, it's impossible not to complete. You can't really crash into anything. One guy also gets a certificate naming him as the fastest driver of the day. This is not me, although my course does end on a high note. During a final session in the Subaru, with Smyth himself as the instructor, most of what he told us this morning finally clicks.
I'm tuned in with the instructions now, so when he says "brake!" I hit the brake, even though it always seems too early. I've cut out the spins, I've got the hand-brake turn down to a T (or down to an L, as should be the case). And when I pass the finish line for the last time, I'm confident enough to want to know how I did. "Not bad," he says, hesitating just a little before handing out the ultimate accolade: "You're up there with the lads."
Rally School Ireland half-day courses from €140-€215, full day €320-€420, www.rallyschoolireland.ie, 047-89098