Life in the fast lane

From cosmetic medicine to race car driving, Dr Mary Dingley is deft at switching gears to deliver precision outcomes both in the clinic and on the track.

You know Dr Mary Dingley as an esteemed cosmetic physician and passionate advocate for patient safety and industry regulation, but you may not know that she is also skilled at blipping the throttle and dropping the hammer.

We chat with Dr Dingley and her husband Roman on their shared love of cars and motorsports and the places it has taken them.

Start your engines…

Tell us about your experience on the track. What are some of the most exhilarating races you and Roman have been part of?

Roman used to race karts when he was younger but had to give it up due to financial constraints. I made a point of getting my racing licence as a young adult but never used it due to the time constraints of working as a doctor. Roman started racing again after we got married.

We actually met because we had the same kind of car. He was active in the car club. I wasn’t, but he had organised a Christmas in July function for the club which ended up being cancelled and I started teasing him on email about cancelling Christmas. We ended up going out on July 31st 1999 (New Year’s Eve after Christmas in July) and the rest is history!

He was surprised at my race driving ability – car placement, ability to heel and toe/match revs – and he really blotted his copybook by going off track, big time, at our first track meet, trying to impress me! We ended up getting married in Florence within six months of our first date.

I can’t attend most of Roman’s races due to work commitments but I am there in spirit as his principal sponsor. He takes on board footage of all his races, so of course he can always benefit from my expert critique afterwards – whether he wants to hear it or not! It’s obviously of great benefit as he’s driving better than ever!

After we got married, Roman started racing in Formula Ford and progressed up to Formula 3, which is the fastest category of racing in Australia. He has won the Formula 3 National Championship three times in a row, and I guess he’s still the reigning champion as it hasn’t run the last two years due to border closures.

Roman has also raced overseas, most notably at Brands Hatch (I warned him that whatever he did, he wasn’t allowed to go off at Dingle(y) Dell), Zolder in Belgium and Spa Francorchamps in the Belgian Ardennes. The latter was probably the most exciting for him as he had to qualify in the rain. The overseas races have been mainly in Le Mans prototype cars.

Can you share any stories about what goes on behind the scenes of motorsports that many of us may not know about?

I think most people think of racing drivers as adrenaline junkies who are just sitting in the car doing very little. I think that’s probably true of drag racers. For Roman, who races “wings and slicks” cars, it’s about the focused zone it takes him to where he’s driving at an intuitive level. For me, I’m not a speed freak. I am a control freak, so it’s the challenge of braking at the perfect mark, getting the perfect line around each corner and getting the perfect balance of the car. If that is all perfect, then you will be fast and it will look seamless, not “spectacular” as they often show on car shows with smoking tyres. I guess that probably tells you a bit about how I approach my work as well!

With wings and slicks cars, there are a lot of G forces on the driver, which put a lot of stress on the driver’s body, especially the neck muscles, as there is also the weight of the helmet to consider. The neck muscles do recruit quite quickly with training (driving), but professional drivers often have quite large necks compared with their body size.

Who are some interesting people you’ve met through racing?

Roman and I had just finished a tour, driving on various tracks in Europe, culminating at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, and we had then gone on to Graz. Little did we know we were staying in a hotel owned by Dr Helmut Marko (head of driver development for the Red Bull Formula 1 team) and we did meet him just prior to his going to the Budapest Grand Prix.

He is an interesting chap who was to be a better Austrian GP driver than Niki Lauda, until he lost an eye. He did also win the Le Mans 24 hours race. He has a great interest in art as well – a lot of which is housed in his hotels. There’s even an outdoor modern art representation of his face in the back landscape of the hotel in which we were staying. I recognised his face even before I know he owned the hotel!

What are your top 3 most coveted cars and why?

We visited the Pagani manufacturing facilities outside of Bologna and those cars are true works of art. It is a great place to visit, should you be in the area. It is so clean, so precise, so artistic and well-presented.

Lamborghinis are fun to drive with a great sense of theatre. Very “look at me!”

But, really, the car that I currently have is the one I love and suits me most. I have an Alfa Romeo 4C launch edition. It looks best in white, which is what I have, rather than red. It sounds great and everywhere I go people ask me if they can photograph it as it is truly beautiful.

What have been the highlights of travelling the world to compete in various races?

We can’t always travel together when Roman is racing, but I guess his highlight would be racing at Spa which is most racers’ dream track.

With car-associated experiences, there have been many. I had been invited to speak at a conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the organisers heard that I was a huge fan of Ayrton Senna, so they went out of their way to take us (Roman came as my body guard!) to Interlagos, the Brazilian Grand Prix track, and to the Ayrton Senna museum. It was incredibly emotional!

We’ve also had some great trips through the UK and Europe, driving some fantastic supercars on great driving roads and staying in magnificent properties.

What are your favourite travel destinations and why?

We tend to favour Europe. Italy is a favourite as we were married there and we enjoy the culture, food, history, scenery and cars, but we also enjoy France and Germany which has great cars and relatives!

Now that travel is back on the cards, where are you planning your next vacation and why?

We haven’t planned anything international, yet, until we can be more certain of quarantine-free, safe travel, but we’d like to do what we had planned to do prior to COVID putting a spanner in the works. Roman had planned to meet up with a Spanish team, go to Portimao in Portugal for some testing, meet up with me in London for a conference and then head to Spa for a race. I’m not sure the dates will all fall into place for that.

We also want to go back to Italy and catch up with some friends in Bergamo – he used to be the “head” of a race helmet company and she is a designer for a French fashion house.

Driving patient safety

You have made a real impact in educating both practitioners and consumers about the dangers associated with laser/IPL devices in untrained hands. How has this helped to tighten regulations? What is your ultimate desired outcome for the industry?

I’m not sure that we’ve got anywhere near our desired outcome with respect to energy-based devices. While we have some Queensland authorities on side, there is still very little regulation nation-wide.

I hate the way that cosmetic medicine is sometimes now seen as a commodity that is just bought. It really should be something that is properly and soberly considered after a full and complete consultation between a doctor and the patient. It is also something that not every doctor is capable of doing well and we should all realise that some have aptitudes in areas other than cosmetic medicine. Those with aptitude in the area then need appropriate training and assessment. They should then practice in an ethical and responsible way.

The Cosmetic Medicine Centre is one of the industry’s first woman-owned and run cosmetic clinics. What other achievements and milestones over the past 30-odd years are you most proud of?

I conducted the first workshops for teaching dermal fillers in Australia – it was collagen, in those days. In the late 1990s, I was involved in the pre-registration trial for hyaluronic acid (Restylane) to be listed on the ARTG and performed most of the cases. Since 2005, I have been on the Panel of Experts for Avant (or its predecessor) for cosmetic and laser medicine to ensure that cosmetic physicians have a peer representing their interests. I was the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for the ACCS (now ACCSM) for seven years and brought the training to a more accountable level and I still train registrars in my rooms. I was on the inaugural board of the CPCA, having it brought it from the CPSA to its current form.

I didn’t think I’d have much to say for this until I thought about it!