MOTORSNEWS FORMULA BMW SERIES:IMAGINE THE average weekend of the average 16-year-old Dubliner and it probably features a bit of Facebook surfing, some slack time hanging around whichever shopping centre is nearest home and a fair degree of time moaning that nobody understands them.
What you don’t expect is to find one poring over sheets of data while waiting for the most important half hour of his young life in the unbearable heat and humidity of a Malaysian garage. Gary Thompson, though, has chosen a slightly different path to your average teen.
The fifth-year student is in Kuala Lumpur for his first ever car race, in the Formula BMW Pacific series, racing on the undercard to last weekend’s Formula One race. And he won.
While regular kids look at their elders as a passing annoyance getting in the way of freedom, Thompson is to be found in the BMW tent in the Sepang support paddock hanging on the words of more senior paddock dwellers. Then again, Nick Heidfeld and Dr Mario Theissen are giving the lectures.
So how does a kid from Donabate end up here, halfway around the world, lining up on a grid that will the following day see Jenson Button aim for a second consecutive victory?
“Long story,” he says. “My dad used to sponsor a driver called John O’Hara and John couldn’t put together the budget to race in Europe so came out here to race in Asian F3. That led to dad starting a team, which then changed to a Formula BMW team and so we got involved with racing here.”
While Thompson’s father Noel was deepening his involvement in Asian racing, Gary was at home learning the craft as so many have, in karting. When it came time to move on, Asia was a natural destination.
“To be honest, I had a bad year in karting last year,” he says. “I broke some ribs late in the year but I missed out a lot of races because I had a serious stomach illness that left me with no energy at all. It sort of precipitated the step up to cars.
“But in the meantime things had changed with dad’s involvement here, so it was only a couple of weeks ago that I signed with E-Rain Racing here – and here I am.”
It was an advantageous choice. E-Rain finished in second place in last year’s championship and Thompson has slotted into a team that knows how to win. And so, it seems, does Thompson.
Despite a poor start in his first race of the weekend, Thompson clawed his way back to the lead and dominated, finishing almost three seconds in front to claim his first single-seater win on his debut.
The good start was capped on Sunday in race two, finishing in third position, having come back from another difficult start.
But, before the celebrations could start properly, Thompson was on a plane bound for Amsterdam. There, on Monday afternoon, he picked up a car and headed for Spa to test a similar car for the European version of the series in which he’ll contest a few events this year before jetting back to Asia.
It’s a relentless schedule that leaves him tired and behind in his schoolwork – but it is one he wouldn’t change.
“I love it,” he says. “From the first time I sat in a go-kart, I loved it. I thought about leaving school but didn’t and I do have understanding teachers. But this is what I want to do.”
It sure beats hanging out at the local shopping centre.