IT'S been an extraordinary first season of car racing for Gary Thompson. He's clocked up more air miles than Barack Obama and gone from the semi anonymity of European karting to the blinding glare of challenging for a major international single-seater series. Through it all, Thompson has maintained an even keel and a level head more reminiscent of Obama than a 17-year-old Leaving Certificate student in his first year out of karts.

From victory in his first ever car race to the crushing disappointment of losing his championship lead on a weekend when he was bundled off track by his title rival, Thompson has kept his emotions in check, managing to finish in the points in every race with just the final round remaining at the time of writing.

A record of ten podium finishes from 14 races in the Formula BMW Pacific series tells its own story of Thompson's ability to marry whitehot pace with a veteran's consistency at a level of racing where drivers rarely think much beyond the next gearchange. By the end of the year even Thompson, his own harshest critic, was able to look back with contentment at a season that had produced a maiden car title in the Formula BMW Pacific Rookie Cup and an excellent second place overall in the Formula BMW Pacific Championship.

'If you'd offered me the Rookie Cup, second overall, a win and nine other podiums as well as poles and fastest laps at the start of the season I'd have taken your hand with it,' says Thompson, relaxing back in Dublin ahead of an end-of-season trip to the Hungaroring to test a Formula Master car for Jen ze r Motorsport. 'The goal at the start of the season was to finish in the top five in the championship and I was hoping that I could get on the podium from about midseason onwards. Instead, we won first time out and I was in the battle for both titles right from the start.'

Thompson's ability to cope with the unexpected has been well honed over the previous nine seasons in karts where he quickly bucked the trend and headed for the British and European circuits rather than learning the ropes in Ireland for a few seasons. By the time the moment came to switch to cars seven years later, Thompson had scored Ireland's best ever result in the Super One JICA series, third overall as well as 13th in the European Championship from an initial entry of 250.

His final season in karts, 2008, produced an excellent fifth place in the Margutti Trophy at the start of the year, but ultimately the season fizzled out early, with illness and exams badly compromising his European KF2 Championships right from the off.

In a way that made the decision to cross the rubicon into car racing and his dad immediately went about crafting a plan. Eschewing the conventional and well trodden path into European cars, the Thompsons enacted a plan that had its seeds in John O'Hara's successful race winning campaigns in Asian Formula 3 several years previously.

Gary began his first steps towards 2009 testing a Formula BMW under the tutelage of O'Hara, the Donabate driver's coach and mentor. After careful consideration Thompson opted to race with established race winners E-Rain Motorsport in time for the first round of the championship.

Testing went well and Gary travelled to Sepang for the first round of the championship at the Malaysian Grand Prix eager to make an impression. Being thrust into the cauldron of a car debut on the undercard to a Formula One Grand Prix might have fazed many drivers, but Thompson blossomed in the spotlight.

Two pole positions in qualifying ensued and Gary coolly produced the perfect start to his race career with victory in the first race, despite initially slipping to fourth. He calmly picked off the cars ahead and raced on to the flag and a meeting with BMW boss Mario Theissen on the podium. 'Hearing the national anthem standing under the flag was a really proud moment,' he says. 'And doing it in front of F1 teams and the world's media was pretty good too.' A tardy getaway cost Thompson dear in the second race of the weekend as he slipped to third. He might still have won as he was catching the cars ahead at a rate of knots when the race was stopped just after halfway.

Still, another podium finish helped secure the early points advantage and he headed into the season in bullish form. While the race wins proved elusive, Gary kept scoring podium finishes, an admirable achievement given some of the driving standards on display. Thompson kept racking up the scores and secured the Rookie Cup title for first-year car racers along with second overall in the series one round early at Okayama in Japan on November 1st. Up to that point he had also secured more prize-money than any other driver and, ahead of the final round in Macau, he was already working on next season.

'The test with Jenzer Motorsport is an exploratory outing to see what the Formula Master series has to offer. At the moment we have a number of offers in Japanese Formula 3 and that is looking the more likely destination for 2010.' Thompson, though, is not ruling out a move to Europe at some stage. Formula One is the ultimate ambition, of course, and Japanese F3 would be a great step on the ladder.

His performances haven't gone unnoticed in the world of commerce, either, and Thompson was grateful to pick up an important sponsor, Cebu Pacific, one of Asia's leading low-cost airlines, after that stellar first round. While European racing threatens to stagnate in the current recession, Asia seems to be weathering the storm.

'It's been a great first year and I'm delighted I've been able to show what I'm capable of.'