Racing has always been in the blood of Irish hockey legend Nicci Daly, but even in that rich family motorsport tapestry, electric scooter competition is a novel addition.
This weekend, Daly, who also lined out for Dublin and played hockey for Ireland, will be in Dubai to take part in the Electric Scooter Cup having competed in the inaugural eSkootr Championship in 2022 for the Carlin team.
Her desire to race competitively shouldn't come as surprise given that she is the niece of Derek Daly, who raced in 64 F1 Grands Prix, while her father Vivion raced in Formula Ford. Daly is also a cousin of Conor Daly, who has competed extensively in the IndyCar Series.
She also holds a masters degree in motorsport engineering and has worked as a data engineer previously for Juncos Racing in America.
"It’s something I’m a little bit used to now (being called an e-scooter racer) because I spent all of last year racing the electric scooters," Daly told 2FM’s Game On.
"This year we didn’t get to do a lot of racing but we’re back in Dubai this weekend competing. It’s great.
"I still don’t really, I suppose, think of myself as a full-blown racer; I’m very much always a hockey player at heart and a Gaelic footballer.
"I’m excited, I really enjoy the racing because obviously racing has been a huge part of my family growing up, albeit not on scooters.
"Just getting to be involved in any type of racing is always something I wanted to be involved in."
"It’s always been something I’ve been really passionate about growing up," she added.
"I’ve always looked up to my Dad and Derek in what they’d achieved in motorsport.
"Coming from Ireland, where it’s such a small sport, and what they managed to do. Derek made it all the way to the top of the sport in Formula 1 and my Dad, even in Ireland, managed to elevate the sport.
"I just always looked up to them, role models from a very young age, and I just developed a passion for motorsport from them."
Electric scooter racing is a rapidly growing sport and as the Dubliner explains, it’s not for the faint-hearted.
"They’re purpose-built scooters for racing, they’re not the same as you see on the streets in the cities," said Daly, who played 200 times for Ireland and helped them to a 2018 Hockey World Cup silver medal.
"They are bespoke, custom-made scooters, they have a lean angle of 56 degrees and they can reach up to speeds of 140kms (per hour).
"They’re proper racing pieces of equipment and they’re fully kitted out with data loggers so you can track all of the data, speed, gyrometers, accelarometer, all of these things that can help you understand how well the scooter is behaving in terms of its performance. Also how well you are behaving in terms of your riding performance, your breaking technique, your throttle technique, racing line, all of that sort of stuff.
"They also have racing tyres, there’s three different compounds of tyres, a soft, medium and hard – all of this sounds really familiar to anyone who follows motorsport."
Despite coming up against much more experienced riders who had cut their teeth on motorbikes or motorcross, Daly finished eighth out of 30 in the 2022 unisex championship – and she hopes a new team change can lead to even better results.
"Last year I raced for Carlin who would be a pretty well-known motorsports team in the Junior Formula in particular.
"It was great because my cousin Conor obviously raced with them in IndyCar and in GP3 when he was coming up through the ranks. It was nice of me to follow suit a little bit and continue the Daly-Carlin family connection and relationship there.
"This year I’m racing for a new team called XPRS Racing. It’s run by a guy called Zafar Bhunnoo from the UK and I have two new team-mates as well in Killian Larher and Carlos Espinosa, so it’s a whole new championship, it’s a whole new scooter and it’s a whole new team so there’s a lot to get familiar going into this weekend."
