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Lauriston School principal Dianne Prendergast, happy in her week-day job with members of her new entrants’ class.
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PHOTOS TETSURO MITOMO 240212-TM-017
Meet Dianne Prendergast and it’s easy to imagine her doing her day job, teaching new entrants at Lauriston School, but that’s only half the story. She talks to Sue Newman about doing double duty as a teacher during the week and a record-holding, highly-skilled speed freak on the race track at the weekend.
Dianne's double life D
ianne Prendergast leads a double life. The woman most people know teaches infants at Lauriston School. Her working days are spent surrounded by wide-eyed youngsters who know her as Mrs P. That’s the conventional Dianne Prendergast. Behind that cool, blonde exterior there’s a second persona lurking, one that sees her take her life to the edge most weekends as she morphs into Dianne Prendergast the speed freak. Her type of speed is legal, it’s above board. It’s the speed she generates behind the wheel of a racing car on the race track and it’s the kind of speed that’s earned her fame. She’s good at what she does - at both jobs. As she does in teaching, on the track she also competes on an equal footing with the guys. No concessions are made here. If you want to play hard, then you play on the same track, in the same race, by the same rules. And Dianne wouldn’t have it any other way. When she dons her race overalls, slides on her helmet and slips behind the wheel, she asks for nothing more than the opportunity to push her car and her nerve to the limit.
On track and off, she has her own dedicated support team, her pit crew. That team numbers just one. Husband Anthony. It’s the perfect relationship, on track and off. Looking back, Dianne’s date with speed was probably set and sealed early in her youth. “I’ve always liked cars, liked speed and I’ve always liked driving. I lived at Anama when I was a child and it was always a long drive to get anywhere and as a country kid, of course I learned to drive early.” She graduated from the farm truck in the farm paddock to rural back roads and finally to licensed driver with her own car. And then she found Anthony and the Ashburton Car Club. What those years on the farm hadn’t done, a few club rallies did, convincing her that no matter how fast she went, she’d always want to go faster. The club went to Ruapuna Raceway to give members a chance to try their skills on the drag racing strip. Dianne tried once and was hooked. Her hot rod lost its allure when she was given the chance to buy a ‘rail’ – a long,
skinny drag racer. “I guess I was lucky to have lots of success straight off. That’s the car I won the New Zealand champs in and the one I set the New Zealand speed record in.” It’s a record she still holds – 154 miles per hour in 8.9 seconds, set in the 2000–2001 drag racing season. The feeling of speed is indescribable, the ultimate buzz really, Dianne said. But setting that record also meant some of the challenge disappeared. “I’d won the national champs , the North Island champs and the South Island champs and I’d got a New Zealand record. Do you go out and do the same thing again, or do something else?” A spurt of growth in Anthony’s contracting business meant she had to opt for something else and racing took a back seat for a couple of years. That didn’t mean the desire had gone; Dianne knew that it was only a matter of time before she was behind the wheel and on the track again. “Drag racing was a great page in the album, but this is now another page.” For her driving is a complete change of
pace from educating young minds. “It’s great for the kids to see me in another role and we all need something to get us buzzing, to get the adrenalin going.” Her return to the track came in a more modest way, when Anthony and mate Herb built up an old Cortina Mark II chassis that had been lying in the shed for 30 years. “It was the project he was always going to get onto, but I guess it’s just taken him a while. He bought it in his late teens and it’s been shifted at least half a dozen times, but he didn’t give up, he was just waiting for the right time.” And that right time was last year and Dianne swapped the thrill of drag racing for the more modest challenge for circuit racing in the classic car category. In a 1971 Sunbeam Rapier. “It’s not the most powerful car but it’s a fun car to drive and quite a different experience to drag. It’ll go 100 miles an hour on the straight, but it takes a long time to get there.” The slower Sunbeam, however, proved to be the ideal vehicle to learn the skills of driving a circuit rather than a straight line. There was no temptation to corner at high speed.