Boy racer smashes land speed record

A 19-year-old from Navan has broken the Irish land speed record, according to reports from within the car customisation community. The Spanner believes that CCTV footage of Derek ‘Dicey’ Reilly’s 314 km/h dash down the N3 has been sent to the Guinness Book of Records for verification. Mr Reilly’s Honda Civic is thought to have outpaced a Garda helicopter which arrived on the scene.

An independent auditor from the car customisation community, James ‘Belter’ Geraghty, 18, was also present in the vehicle. He briefed reporters about the high-speed jaunt. Speaking behind a pall of exhaust smoke from his own running vehicle, he said: “Dicey had hoped to complete the entire five-mile run on the right-hand side of the road, but a few trucks got in our way. Obviously he’s disappointed about that. Still, 314 km/h isn’t bad considerin’ he’s only been drivin’ two weeks.”

Mr Reilly’s next project is to actually take flight in his customised car, as Mr Geraghty explained. “Dicey’s orderin’ an extra-wide spoiler that’ll act like a pair of wings. His Civic is highly aerodynamic as it is, so we’re hopin’ to take flight some time around January.”

Reilly and Geraghty have formed a pressure group, Boy Racers Against Tethers (BRAT). “How are we expected to race properly if cars with weedy little engines are cloggin’ up our roads? These small-engined vehicles have no place on our roads. And another thing we’re campaignin’ for is to have ‘donuts’ become part of the drivin’ test. ‘Donuts’ are a vital aspect of car customisation culture and there’s no better way of makin’ a quick turnaround if someone’s chasin’ ye,” said Geraghty, whose next comments were drowned out by the revving of a posse of disproportionately large engines.

Seán Kenny