CELEBRITY FANS: MICHAEL LYSTER, Broadcaster, 56: Rally driving
How did you get into rally driving?
I used to cover the big rallies for RTÉ back in the '80s. Myself and Vincent Hogan, the Irish Independentjournalist, used to travel around together. We were always talking about doing something. In 1989, I got a chance to sit in with Derek Bell as his navigator. He was doing this rally as a celebrity drive for Opel. They asked me if I'd do the Irish leg with him. That moved me from sitting on a bar stool talking about it to actually sitting in a rally car. I just loved it, so a couple of months later I organised sponsorship.
What kind of experience did you have?
I had absolutely no experience, whatsoever. There was certain regulation, but it was a bit more flexible than today where, for example, you’ve to go to rally school before competing. With Vincent as my co-driver, we did the Circuit of Ireland in 1990 as our first rally. It was a four-day event, the biggest rally in Ireland. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have had the cheek to attempt it. Naivety is a wonderful thing. We just said we’d tear into this thing. We actually finished the rally. Now, we were last, but we got the experience by just going out and doing it.
It’s a hair-raising sport. What’s the attraction?
You need a bit of madness in you, that’s for sure. It can be dangerous, but I wouldn’t be a speed merchant. It’s the challenge of trying to keep the car on the road. You’re driving down tight country roads. You’re not driving down the Naas dual carriageway. The weather conditions might be poor. It might be raining. The roads could be slippy. You might be only doing 40 or 50 miles an hour but you could be doing it around a tight bend or over a bridge. It’s about trying to keep the pace up, to get a good time on the stage.
You must have great trust in your co-driver?
It’s huge. When you’re calling the pace notes, you simply can’t afford to make a mistake. If you get it wrong, it could be catastrophic, for obvious reasons.
Can you describe a typical rally?
In a two-day rally, which would be Galway or Cork or the Lakes of Killarney, you’d have, maybe, 17 or 18 stages. Each of those stages could be anything from seven miles long to 12 or 13 miles. So you’ve total concentration for about 10 minutes. Then you drive to the next stage at normal speed. In between, you might have other things to worry about – a problem with the car, a puncture; you might have hit something and done a bit of damage. So even in between the stages, you might have a panic. Basically, your mind is spinning for the entire day.
Do you know how to dismantle a car and put it back together?
I know how to take it apart (laughs). I’ve done that a couple of times, up against a few walls. I wouldn’t necessarily be good at putting it back together again.
What’s the cost in running a car for a year?
How long is a piece of string? It depends on what kind of money you have. At the level that I would have been rallying at, the car would be worth €60,000 and it would cost me €10,000 or €15,000 to do a rally. Then you go looking for sponsorship money. It would depend on the money you can raise. I would have done four or five or six rallies a year.
What has been your career highlight?
Probably the Cork International Rally in 1993 where I finished third overall as co-driver to Enda Nolan from Carlow. We were actually second going into the last stage but got a puncture and dropped a place. The rally was won by Bertie Fisher with Austin McHale.
When was the last time you did a rally?
I haven’t rallied for about two years. I suppose I’ve been a bit lazy about it, and obviously the last year has been difficult financially – people don’t have as much money for sponsorship. I haven’t finished with the sport. We’ll do it again.
What’s the most unusual thing you witnessed in a rally?
We were doing the Circuit of Ireland one year and we came around a corner, in Kilkenny, I think it was, and there was a fella standing on the side of the road mooning. As you can imagine, you zoom past fairly quickly, and Vincent Hogan was calling out the pace notes and, once we got a chance for a breather, up the road on a long section, we said to each other: “Did you see what I thought I saw?”
- In conversation with Richard Fitzpatrick
