Looking for a fast-track route

Monaco harbour sparkles in the shallow-angled rays of a late afternoon sun. Shards of iridescence scrape into the heat haze from the rippling water, from the brilliant white hulls of million dollar playthings moored tight to the marina, arrayed to best afford a glimpse of the billion dollar motorised show about to unfold on the streets of the principality.

Damien Faulkner stands by the binnacle of a 50-foot yacht on which he is guest for an afternoon of Cote D'Azur cruising and smiles broadly. It is the first time he has seen Grand Prix weekend Monaco in the flesh.

The first time he has not peered longingly at its vulgar charms through the seemingly unbreachable glass barrier of a television screen. It is something to behold. Something to make you whistle in wonder. Something to make you dream.

For a 24-year-old from Moville, Co Donegal, who has spent the last 10 years with just one aspiration, one vision in his head, it is what life is all about. Formula One. Sure, he has been to grands prix before, has been close enough to touch the world he desperately wants to be a part of, but this is different.

Every element of the dream is encapsulated in the crush of boats and banners, the fenced-off streets that the day after will become a track for the 22 members of the world's most elite sports club.

He laughs, guides his girlfriend's eyes towards a monstrous yacht bedecked in motor racing sponsor's colours and says "I'll take that one. No, make it two". This is the dream.

Germany, last month. The reality. Tagged on to the back of an American Le Mans series 1,000 km race at the Nurburgring, Damien Faulkner is preparing to race the latest double header in the Formula Palmer Audi championships he is currently leading.

There is much at stake. For one thing the £125,000 Faulkner has pieced together pound by pound to allow him to race. For another, the prize.

The champion gets to move another step closer to Formula One, earning a paid for drive in F3000, the series which races as the support act to F1 on grands prix weekends, an opening slot that may just get you a headline gig.

Indeed, the Nurburgring, despite the name being redolent of F1's dizzy heights, has the feel of a battle of the bands, the series' 19 drivers all bidding to one day be a member of the F1 supergroup.

They know that while they pay to play in the small club that is Palmer Audis, a week on, just down the road at Austria's A1 Ring, motor racing's Rolling Stones will play to a crowd in excess of 100,000.

For someone on the outside looking in, it seems a million miles away, a different galaxy and you wonder at the self-belief these drivers must have. For these 19, bidding to move one step closer, there are a hundred times as many racing in similar series the world over, all believing their championship will put them centre stage.

But, as Faulkner climbs into his 160 m.p.h. Audi-powered car and prepares to attack the Nurburgring's unfamiliar contours, the distance is not so great.

He may be playing to smaller crowds, he may have to pay for the privilege, but he also knows that the songs come from the same score and he thinks he can play them just as well. He just needs the break.

Getting that break is one of the great misunderstood stories in motor racing, however. Among Sunday afternoon fans there exists an assumption that the 22 members of the F1 club were born fully fledged into McLarens and Ferraris.

The incredible one-in-a-million struggle to get there is of little relevance and less interest. It is a struggle Faulkner is all too aware of and all too keen to illuminate.

"I don't know where people think F1 drivers spring from," he says with a wry laugh. "People just accept that they're there and that's it. But it's not. Getting there is the hardest thing in the world. The hardest.

"It's not like any other sport. In soccer, say, if you're good, you might get a trial and get signed and then progress through the youth system, whatever. Racing's not like that. There is no back-up. Nothing. You're totally on your own."

And on your own you must assemble a game plan that will see you defeat innumerable other hopefuls and claim one of 22 places on the grid. You must play Sunday league football and believe that shortly you will be picked as striker for the national team. And on the way you will happily spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on new boots.

"It's very difficult to make people understand," he adds. "Most people think I get paid for doing this and that's absolutely not the case. It's the complete opposite. Even getting myself to this level has been more difficult than you could ever possibly imagine.

"At some points you think you're not going to do it, that it's over because the money simply isn't there. I've had that thought quite often on the way to where I am now. There are times, during off season in the winter, when you have no money for the next season and you can't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

"And sometimes the light doesn't come until the last second. It can be that tight. It's really difficult to cope with."

Faulkner has spent the past eight years coping with the demands. Beginning at nine, in time-honoured fashion, driving cars around his father Frank's Donegal garage, Faulkner became convinced that he should race.

Starting late, in his mid-teens, he jumped straight into single-seat Formula Fords and, by the end of his first half-season, curtailed due to lack of money and availability of equipment, he had won a televised Leinster Trophy event.

At the end of his second season, again cut short due to lack of funds, he had done enough to win the championship. The racing was easy. Convincing sponsors to back him was harder.

"I always knew that I could race. That wasn't a problem," he says. "The money was something else. There were certain things that curtailed my progress, most of which were to do with money.

"It happens at the end of every season. You have absolutely nothing to fall back on. It's not like you're sitting there thinking `I've been paid £100,000 by this team, now let's go and spend it'."

It is why he believes the Palmer series is a godsend. Begun three years ago by former racing driver Jonathan Palmer, the series provides, for a flat fee of £125,000, each driver with a car and mechanic for the season.

All the 1.8 litre turbo-charged Audi-powered, Van Diemen chassis-ed, cars are prepared identically and no driver can, via better finance, steal a mechanical march on any other. Winning is solely down to driving skill.

"Every championship that I entered, not having any money was a major disadvantage, which is why this championship is so good. It allows all the competitors to race on an equal basis.

"It's the same chassis, same engine, all prepared by the same people. There is no opportunity for one driver to get ahead of anyone else through the car. It's all down to the driver. Therefore it's great for me."

Going into last weekend's twin races at the Nurburgring, one of four weekends contested on European grands prix circuit (the others being Silverstone, Spa and the season closer at Magny Cours) he is leading the series by 14 points.

With four weekends and eight races left, he can see the dream coalescing into reality. It is getting closer.

Close is not good enough. E radio, describing what went wrong. "I was quickest in testing. I qualified on pole for both races. I got a great start in the first race, was a second and a half ahead after the first lap, which is shit, it just went downhill from there." In Saturday's race he spun after just two laps. He finished 10th. He writes it off though, knowing that Sunday morning's second race will be better. Starting from pole he loses out to close championship rival Robbie Kerr into turn one.

By the time they reach the Veedol chicane he is back in the ascendancy, Kerr spinning off as the two clash. Faulkner finishes second. It is fine. He has extended his lead in the championship to 17 points. Then he learns Kerr has filed a protest.

The Irishman is docked 30 seconds and dropped to 12th. His championship lead is down to just two points. It is a blow. You ask him has he considered that he might not make it. That the road might end here.

"Failure is not something that's foremost in my mind," he shrugs, already consigning the weekend to the scrapheap. "It's kept away, hidden in a dark corner in the back of my mind. I always have to think positive. Always have to believe that I'm going to do it."

As he sits back and asks his mother and father to smile and look unconcerned by the penalty he has been given, the heady visions from Monaco and the F1-style atmosphere of the Nurburgring begin to quickly fade.

In four weeks' time, they will be replaced by the somewhat more down-at-heel surrounds of Snetterton. But he will be there, trying to hold a slender lead in the championship. Trying to win the title he believes will allow him to join the big band.

"They're still chasing me," he insists. "We've got another four-week break and I'm still in the lead. I've proved I'm the quickest bloody driver in the championship and the most consistent. The others all know that. I won't change a thing. I'll just keep trying - it'll come."

It is an apt statement of intent, something like the words from a song by one of those big bands and one that somehow, given the long, hard road Faulkner has embarked upon, seems just about right.

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need."