Posing in her ex-Rubens Barrichello Jordan 193, racing driver Sarah Kavanagh is all smiles. All the men stand around admiring her car, mumbling about revs and feeling too self-conscious to tackle her on mechanical details. Makes a nice change.
"If I hadn't been such a mechanical dim wit. . ." muses self-confessed frustrated racedriver Garry Manning. Here to launch the Phoenix Park Motor Races, which take place over the weekend of August 19th, Manning is wearing the chains of office of his moonlighting job as president of the Leinster Motor Racing Club. He has a dayjob in Irish Life, though he does say that his role in organising the race meeting takes 52 weeks of the year. David Dumoulin, a former race driver and president of the Irish Motor Racing Club, is here too. The launch also marks opening of an exhibition, The Irish Grands Prix 1929-1931, organised by Bob Montgomery of the Royal Irish Automobile Club Archive.
Phoenix Park was once a hot-spot on the Grand Prix calendar, and Alex Sinclair and Cecil T. Sparks (involvement in the motor industry was probably inevitable with that surname), both from Motorsport Ireland, want to re-establish the meeting as one of the key dates in the Irish motorsport calendar. They hint they have something up their sleeves for the 100th anniversary in 2003. uchas, the Government agency that manages the park, jokes that he hopes the deer don't get in the way to disrupt the racing.