Fleur finds traction in trust

FLEUR PEDERSEN raises her voice as one would typically do when trying to be heard above the drone of an engine.

On the other end of the phone is Brian Green, of Palmerston North, as their conversation gradually meanders into a jargonistic lane that would comfortably inject Pedersen, of Havelock North, in that TV advertisement of yesteryear where two young women have no qualms about brainstorming the torque and MacPherson strut of some noble metallic beast.

For all sense and purpose, the 35-year-old primary school relief teacher is a girl among boys playing with big toys in the giddy world of motor rallying.

For more than a decade, driver Green and co-driver Pedersen have built a rapport that finds admirable traction on trust in farflung countries such as Malyasia, China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Finland, Sweden and Britain. It has also yielded a co-driver champion title for Pedersen in New Caledonia and Malaysian rally titles and series championship bragging rights.

That word "trust" keeps cropping up like cashew nuts in an oriental takeaway during the interview.

"We get on very well and one of the most important elements is trust," she says before the pair try to tame the Rally of Hawke's Bay this weekend.

The Hawke's Bay Car Club organised rally is based in Waipukurau but will take in routes at Porangahau, including the beaches north of the town before the field of about 60 finish today at the Bridge Pa Motordome.

"I trust he'll listen to what I say to get us safely to the other end and he trusts me to make the right calls," Pedersen says of the 65-year-old driver, emphasising a wrong call could prove to be disastrous in his 1997 model Ford Escort World Rally car.

She sees her role almost in a Swiss knife mould - secretary, navigator and mother. She accepts it's almost like a dream marriage.

"I'm almost like a mother. I have to make sure he eats, stays hydrated and is at the right place at the right time," says the former Napier Girls' High School pupil.

Like any rapport, there must be moments when they blow their gaskets?

She flips a lock of hair back and pins it behind her ear as she stares at the ceiling before replying: "Yes, one time I was late in a call at the Rally of Hakaido, Japan, in 2003.

"He was very quick to tell me."

Arriving last night in Hastings and jumping straight into his overalls for a photo shoot at the Vehicle Testing Station, Green said talking was vital but so was listening.

"The notes are quite hard because you have to really concentrate, and I find for about 23km I can concentrate all right, but much after that you start saying, 'Oh, what's next coming over this corner?'.

"Luckily in the 10 or 11 years we've been together we haven't any problems like that [wrong calls]. We've been upside down only once in Thailand and that was two years ago and that was my mistake," Green says, adding his younger brain's trust is enthusiastic and probably puts more time into the collective than he does.

The owner of Brian Green Property Group, which embraces New Zealand and Australia interests, has been behind a rally wheel since 1969. It's a far cry from those days when they had no roll bars, radical seatbelts and decent tyres or breaks.

"So rallying is really my relaxation. A lot of people say how can that be possible because it's so stressful.

"I get into the car in the morning. I push a button to start it up and I've got 12 hours roughly with nobody ringing, no internet, no faxes and no nothing.

"By tomorrow I'll be totally relaxed but physically stuffed."

Green feels Pedersen doesn't have a choice but to act like a bloke.

"It's obviously a male sport and in our case it's all males except for Fleur and, occasionally, someone comes along to help with meals who's generally a female," Green says, hoping to add another Bay title to a couple he won in his heyday.

His Ford Escort is not kosher for international races and the Rally of New Zealand but it can be used at club rallies.

Explains Pedersen: "It's too old a model. It's not homologated [approved officially] to meet the set of regulations and age."

Green says he has not driven the car for years after buying the vehicle in 1998.

Pedersen's flirtation with motor sport didn't begin until she left school. In fact, she found it triflely boring when her former boyfriend took her to Bay Car Club rallies as a teenager.

"I used to take a book to read while he raced," says a woman who preferred riding horses as her mother, Teresa Johns, did before she fell off a horse at the age of 12 but went on to encourageg her daughter to take up riding.

All that changed one day, almost two years later, at a race meeting when a more experienced club member, Hugh Baird, took her for a spin in his Mark I Ford Escort.

"It was a gravel road and at the first proper corner he went sideways and not straight.

"We were both looking through the passenger window and I just fell in love with the sport."

Pedersen was co-driving for Mike Turfus, of Dunedin, when Green's regular, Jane McKay, retired. Pedersen didn't hesitate calling up Green, who took her on board after a trial run.

She lauds a former Hastings co-driver, Heather McGrenningan, for helping her early in her career. Her serene step father, Peter Johns, a former co-driver, is an inspiration and her elder brother, Dion Pedersen, of Faraday, near Melbourne, is her No 1 fan.

In the early stages of her career, Pedersen feels she didn't receive the respect she deserved in the testosterone-filled arena.

"It's not so much what they say but what they don't say. They tended to brush over your comments," she says, adding the recognition is certainly there now.

Pedersen has no regrets for a "fantastic lifestyle", minus a husband and motherhood.

"Turn back time I'd do it all over again," says the woman who doesn't fancy rally driving although Green has given her an opportunity to drive the Ford Escort once.

The combination leases a Mitsubishi Evolution 10 for the big races.