Mangan drives from victories on screen to wins on stages

READ ALSO: Sim racing put Mullingar man on road to success in motorsport

Oscar Mangan is in a unique motorsport club whose members have combined wins in rallying with experience racing against the likes of Formula One world champion Max Verstappen. The Mullingar man started in Sim racing, where he encountered the F1 star and scores of others professional drivers, and where he demonstrated he had talent and speed.

His brother-in-law Brian Thornton, who races in the Caterham series in the UK (see page 58), persuaded him to try actual racing cars at a track day in England. Oscar sampled a variety of machinery of increasing speed and power, up to a Formula 3000 single seater, and set lap times that put him at the top of the record board for the track.

His talent was evident and he has since found that the experience of high level sim racing transferred to real life motorsport. That won’t be a surprise to anyone who follows modern motorsport, as racing and test drivers spend hours on sims (simulators) learning tracks and adjusting car set-ups.

Success in sim racing and the speed he demonstrated at the track day in Bedford encouraged Oscar to consider a motorsport campaign at home, and he and his father Dominic Loughran, a veteran of Irish rallying, decided to enter the inaugural Dacia Sandero Challenge Cup in 2025.

The road to success in motorsport was well signposted for Oscar from an early age, though the 26-year-old is too young to remember when his father was a regular front runner on Irish stages at the wheels of various cars, from a MkII Escort to different versions of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo and the ex-Austin McHale BMW M3, and his mother Lisa Roe was his co-driver a lengthy period.

Oscar knows the history even if he didn’t experience it first hand. “I remember when my mam was competing. She stopped competing in 2012 or 2011, so, all through primary school at the weekends, instead of going to a football game, I’d be at a rally. I’d rarely be out at the stages, but I’d be running around the service park or meddling or falling under rally cars.”

Lisa also enjoyed success as co-driver and with other top drivers including Pat Donegan and James Foley from Navan, Trevor Mulligan and James Cassidy.

“I had no interest in football or rugby or anything like that, just rallying, or racing in general,” said Oscar.

He began competing in sim racing when he was a young teenager. “I really wanted to do go-karting, but that is quite expensive. When I was about 11 or 12, I got a simulator, just a wheel and pedals and a seat, for Christmas, and I lived on it for about a year and a half, doing rally games or racing games. Then, when I was 13 or 14, I discovered a platform called iRacing. You’re racing against other people online and I slowly started getting quicker and better and doing competitions and championships.”

By the time he was in college, Oscar was “nearly professional” at sim racing. “I was being paid and there was prize money in competitions,” some of them backed by the likes of Porsche.

During the Covid-19 pandemic when there was no real life motor racing, professional drivers of around Oscar’s age turned to sim racing, and he began competing against now Formula 1 champions Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.

“There was one championship I did two or three years ago where it was 40 teams of two, a sim driver paired with a real driver, so I was paired with a Belgian guy called Frédéric Vervisch, and he’s now a factory driver for Ford in America.

“He was an Audi factory driver in Europe and now he races for the Ford Mustang team in the US, and in the world endurance championship.” Oscar didn’t meet his team-mate face to face, but had regular contact with him and they practised together. He also competed with Seb Priaulx, son of Andy, a top touring car driver in the 1990s. “I raced with him for a couple of weeks, we’d be trading telemetry and then we’d be in racing teams.

“Everyone groups into their teams to practise together and you learn how to set up the car. I’d be reading telemetry almost as much as drivers doing the real racing.”

Having seen his talent in sim racing, Oscar’s brother-in-law, Brian Thornton, an accomplished competitor in Caterham racing in the UK, invited him, with his sister Jane (Brian’s wife) and Dominic to a racing school at the Bedford track in England. “I had never sat in a real racing car, but it felt like the easiest thing, it nearly felt easier than the sim,” said Oscar.

The hours spent on the simulator translated to the real life track, as that day, Oscar drove several cars including a Formula 3000, which not long ago was only one step below Formula One. He also took the wheel of a Ginetta G56 GT4, a BMW M4, a Caterham and a Palmer Le Mans racer. “And that day, I think I finished first in every single one of them, except an obstacle challenge, which I don’t really care about because it wasn’t about speed.

“You sit with a different driver coach for each car, so you drive eight or nine cars throughout the day, and every time, they’d ask if I do karting. I did a bit of karting for about a year, when I was in secondary school, but when I told them I don’t do any racing, they couldn’t believe it because I was only maybe half a second slower than they are at the track they work at every day.”

That impression the driver coaches got was reinforced when Oscar posted the fastest time on the Formula 3000 leaderboard, only half a second off the track record.

The evidence for Oscar’s ability at the wheel was clear and his brother-in-law in particular was pushing him to try competition, so he signed up for the 2025 Dacia Sandero Challenge Cup.

With support from his father, Oscar bought the Dacia Sandero and the competition kit and the pair of them got to work preparing the car.

Dominic said his enthusiasm was fired straight away because it was stage rallying, and he had thought Oscar was more into track racing. They striped the car and installed the rally safety kit – roll cage, seats, harnesses, suspension, performance brake pads. Engine and performance enhancements are not permitted to keep costs down.

As the series has corporate backing from Dacia Ireland, there is a level of professionalism that club crews wouldn’t usually have access to. That includes branded rally suits for driver and co-driver, branded awnings and ground sheets for the service area and PR and other support at each event.

Murray Motorsport, who were selling the kits on behalf of Dacia Ireland, built the first car, provided cars to some customers and guidance to those building their own. Oscar said their advice was helpful, though their engineers were also figuring it out as they went along.

They found the electronics in particular on the Sandero, “pernickety – sensors, for example – we discovered that if you plug out the rear tail lights, the car won’t start, so you’re constantly fighting electrical gremlins, but it was the same for everyone”.

The aesthetics of the rally car were easier to deal with as Dominic is a veteran in the signwriting trade. They used a vinyl wrap, and the finished product received several compliments once they had it fully sorted from round two on.

The car, driver (Oscar) and service crew (Dominic and his friend Alan Kane) organised, they needed a navigator. They kept the family link and approached Elva Roe, Lisa’s sister, who had experience sitting alongside the likes of Gareth and Aaron McHale.

Oscar and Elva began the season well and finished second in category on the first round, the Midland Stages, behind Cillian Doherty and co-driver Tommy Cuddihy. “I was starting to get a feel for the car and we were starting to catch them,” said Oscar. “It was the two of us, we were about 20, 30 seconds ahead of everyone else, and then I slid off on the last corner of the third stage, into a hedge, and lost a couple of minutes. So we didn’t have a great result there, but we knew after that we were competitive.”

The off meant a more cautious approach on round two in Kerry, but they finished fourth, and were happy to perform well.

The third round was the Cavan Stages and Oscar and Elva won the Dacia category to establish themselves as serious contenders for the title.

“We were running second most of that day, Cillian was leading by seven or eight second, and on the last stage we took 20 seconds out of him, and won.

“That was a big thing for us because we were the first to win out of the group who were new to it (the other winners had previous rallying and racing experience), and that was that was really big for us, a big confidence booster. I’d proved to myself that, without hiccups or anything, we could do it.”

Another category win followed on round five, the Sligo Stages. “That was a tricky day because it was really wet and greasy, really bad weather, but we won that rally by nearly a minute. We pulled a huge amount of time in the first loop and then they were playing catch up for the rest of the day.

“Alan was good for giving advice he said ‘you know the rally is nearly won in the recce instead of on the actual stages’ and he said if you get a good recce, that’s a huge advantage to you heading into the actual stages, and I said to Elva if we can nail this stage, throw caution to the wind, we could pull a lot of time, and on the first run through there we pulled maybe 15, 20 seconds and then the next stage was similar – we took another 20 seconds, so going into service we were leading by 48 seconds and we could hold our pace then.”

The close battle between Oscar and Cillian Doherty continued till the end of the season, and as they pushed each other on, taking small gaps of two and three seconds out of one another, their pace improved beyond the opposition, and they finished top two. “On the last round in Claire, I was thinking I’m going to win or go off, and unfortunately we went off, and that was it then. But it was second in the championship and first in class.

“I was happy with the year. I obviously wanted to win it, but equally, I saw it as a beginning, an entry into rallying, not my one chance.”