KEY POINTS:
If you think watching rally drivers being thrown around inside a car going faster than most people drive a road car on tarmac looks bad on the on-board camera, you should try it yourself.
I'm at a bit of a loss how to describe one of the most
exhilarating rides of my life. I have been fortunate enough to experience Pukekohe at full speed in an Australian V8 Supercar, but a full-blown big boys WRC rally car is a completely different kettle of fish.
It's truly amazing how Subaru driver Chris Atkinson makes something that looks so chaotic on television a relatively smooth ride. The new Subaru WRC 2008 hatchback model is in New Zealand for the first time and I got my first rally ride.
I had a preconceived idea being in a rally car would be akin to a ball bearing in a paint tin, on a mixer. But after being strapped in really tight the only thing that could move were my eyeballs.
I have no idea how Atkinson's co-driver can read a thing with the car twisting itself into knots left, right, up and down. My eyes were swivelling around like those novelty eyeballs on springs.
I often wondered why co-drivers sat lower than the driver and nearly always had their heads down. There's just way too much stuff going on out through the window, one minute you're looking at tress, the next the sky, followed by the ground then some safety barriers - visual overload takes over.
However, my biggest "what the f**k am I doing here moment" came just after the start of the super-special stage shakedown run when we were barrelling downhill and all of a sudden, we launched high on to two wheels and all I could see was blue sky.
Atkinson was unperturbed, so who was I to worry? After that it was absolute, controlled bloody bedlam. I'm proud to say I only got caught out looking one way when the car went the other way, twice.
I gave up trying to watch out the window - too much going on. So I watched Atkinson's hands and feet. A tap dancer wouldn't hold a candle to some of the moves I saw. Couple that with one-handed opposite lock steering and changing gear with the other, it was poetry in motion - albeit at the speed of light.
And as for reefing on the handbrake to go round a corner faster, what's that all about?
