The two men, aged 34 and 23 respectively, were fined 2,000 each for dangerous driving at Mullingar district court last Thursday, but there was public outrage after video evidence not shown in court of their high-speed race was leaked to the press by gardai.

"I think they should have been banned for three years, " Gay Byrne, chairman of the Road Safety Authority told the Sunday Tribune. "I think it sends out a very fudged message and I think that in a situation like this, the message going out should have been one of extreme severity."

Despite Garda measures, illegal car racing is continuing to thrive around the country with areas such as Tuam, Co Galway, Carlow and Tramore, Co Waterford, all experiencing bouts of latenight racing in recent years.

With road deaths in Ireland at a stubbornly high rate, it is feared that the Gorman and Rizzini case has sent out the wrong message to boy racers.

"Unofficial road racing is a problem, and there is absolutely no place for it on Irish roads, " said Noel Brett of the Road Safety Authority. "It's an infringement of the Road Traffic Act and it's putting people's lives at risk. If a person wants to get involved in road racing, we would say that there are organised events there, and 32 different motor clubs around the country and we would urge drivers to get involved in those instead.

There is no need for that kind of anti-social behaviour."

Two people who have researched the area of boy racers thoroughly are husband and wife team Jo Mangan and Tom Swift who between them have produced a new play, Drive-by. Coming to Dublin this week as part of the Fringe Festival, Drive-by explores the culture of boy (and girl) racers as they live their lives close to the edge.

"The boy racer culture is very much a part of every small town in Ireland and these are groups of guys whose passion is their cars, " said Swift, who wrote Drive-by.

"There's a real element of speed and racing and a feeling of invincibility that these young guys seems to have. We really wanted to attempt to understand this culture and get behind the need for speed and the idea that death may be just around the corner."

Male drivers aged between 17 and 24 are 10 times more likely to die in a road accident than any other driver and it is generally in this category that boy racers will be found, although girl racers are thought to be getting increasingly involved in the sport.

In recent years, modified cars have become big business in Ireland, with hundreds of companies set up solely to fit cars with bucket seats, performance brakes, lexus lights, tinted windows, 17-inch tyres and numerous other gadgets that will instantly turn a Ford Escort or Opel Corsa into something out of a Formula 1 race. This is Pimp My Ride, Irish-style, and business is booming.

According to Brett however, all owners of modified cars should not be mistaken for boy racers. "There are two kinds of groups in this category, " he said. "The first are young people who modify their cars with a specific style in mind, who spend a lot of money on them and drive extremely carefully in order to keep their cars in the best possible shape. This is their hobby and it's not helpful to lump them in with the other young men and women who are modifying their cars in an illegal fashion, who are using excessive and inappropriate speed and are reckless road users.

"One group are genuine enthusiasts and are no threat on the roads; the others are engaging in anti-social behaviour such as over-revving, speeding, hand-braking and burning doughnuts in the road.

These are the people we would be concentrating on."

It is widely believed that racers are finding new measures to covertly advertise late night races. Some display permanent 'For Sale' signs on their cars as a means of challenging other motorists to a race. By displaying their phone number, they can then be contacted to organise races on a bigger scale.

Racers are also believed to have set up a signalling system whereby they flash their lights at other race-worthy vehicles approaching in the opposite direction when they're looking for competitors.

These kind of practices are hard to prove and always have been. Car racing in Ireland is by no means a recent phenomenon. "I grew up in Co Meath and it seemed that everywhere outside the Pale there was the constant squealing of tyres every night, " said Jo Mangan, director of Drive-By. "I had a friend whose brother died in a car crash when he was 17. That was nearly 20 years ago and young people are still dying.

Today you see the guys all together at a petrol station, talking out their windows with their exhausts conking into action and the engine going. It really annoys local people and it can be quite anti-social, but then old people are very intolerant of the youngf It would have been easy for us to do a play about boy racers with a natural tendency to be fingerwagging, but that's not what we wanted."

Instead, Mangan and Swift researched their subject thoroughly to come at it from an objective angle. This included talking to families of young people killed on the road and going for a ride with some boy racers.

"They showed us their cars and the knowledge and passion they had for them was really eye-opening, " recalled Swift. "They're seen as antisocial, but these are also guys with a real interest and a real passion." The drive around the back roads was "terrifying". "It was like being on a rollercoaster, but without any of the safety procedures, " he said.

Swift is quick to point out however that, while not moralistic, Drive-by does not glorify this kind of lifestyle either. "It's an attempt to understand this clique and an investigation of the effects it can have, " he said. "It's about the tragedy of any life taken away and the effects on the people who are left behind to pick up the pieces."

'Drive-by' comes to Dublin as part of the Fringe Festival from 18-23 September. Previews on 16 September