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TV review: The best Irish racing driver you've never heard of

Tommy Byrne pictured in 1976. Photographer: Dot TV & Film
Tommy Byrne pictured in 1976. Photographer: Dot TV & Film Tommy Byrne pictured in 1976. Photographer: Dot TV & Film

Crash and Burn, BBC 1, Monday at 9pm

If you're not a petrol-head, you've probably never heard of Tommy Byrne.

You really should have.

There aren't many working-class boys from Dundalk who end up as Formula One drivers and get compared with Ayrton Senna.

Perhaps I can be excused because it was a little bit before my time - he was Irish Sports Star of the Year in 1981 and raced in five F1 grand prixs in 1982 - but that seems like a bit of a poor excuse.

In the early eighties he vied with Senna to be the best young driver in the category below F1.

But where Senna had the money and manners to go with his driving ability, Dundalk's finest had talent and a bad attitude.

And as Crash and Burn explained, money and politics are essential to a career in motorsports.

Through all the categories up to F1 the driver pays to race. Byrne's family had no money, so he was relying on the indulgence of team owners who loved his ability to win.

And at first he won everything he looked at. According to a series of experts he could have been one of the greatest ever racing car drivers, with boundless talent and a natural instinct for the sport.

He won the British Formula 3 championship in 1982 and within four years of moving to Britain had a seat in an F1 car.

But Byrne, who liked a drink and a party, wasn't happy with the performance of the Theodore team car and clashed with the racing manager.

"I did talk to someone about getting him bumped off," Byrne admits, apparently half-seriously.

He didn't know it, but after that it was all downhill. And that was despite test driving a car for McLaren at lap times faster than the current world champion.

Formula One had decided that Byrne was too much trouble. He was super fast, but he was broke, wild, dangerous and rude.

Byrne took himself off to America with a dream of racing Indycar, but admits that his focus was gone as he got deeper into drink and drugs.

He won races at lower levels but never got a seat in the big league and ended up racing for a team in Mexico run by a drug cartel.

That ended when the crazed gang leader fired a shot at Byrne when the Irishman asked why he was threatening the prostitutes at a house party.

It was like the George Best story about Miss World, the money and the hotel room, expect that Best had won the European Cup and two league titles with Manchester United.

Byrne was unfortunate to be gifted at a sport where the winner is decided by money and politics as much as ability.

And nothing has changed in motorsport, with F1 fans currently debating the merits of Williams giving a seat to Lance Stroll, the 18-year-old son of a Canadian fashion billionaire who it's estimated has spent £32 million on his son's career.

***

Wild Ireland - Edge of the World, BBC 1, Sunday at 8pm

It was Coast which created this genre - discovering that viewers loved pictures and stories from our coastlines.

But while Wild Ireland is covering the same territory, it is so beautifully captured that it feels like Colin Stafford-Johnson is discovering the Atlantic coast for the first time.

It's easy to forgot the beauty created by 2,000 miles of ocean lashing the west coast of this small island over millennia.

It's a shame that there are only two hour-long programmes because this is a tonic for the travails of life.