Motorsport: Need for speed

The assignment: to delve into our need for speed. As it turned out, this involved a major detour through the joys of noise.

The A1 GP at Taupo is a tantalising weekend for those who live for motor racing. It's not often in this country that motor racing gets a profile tocompare.

Taupo is the friendly flypaper for people who love flying around. Or do they? Is it speed which attracts motor sport's massive, obsessive following around the world. If not, what are the attraction factors?

Maybe some of us are persuaded to believe racing is about speed because of Formula One, motor sport's glamorous shop window. There isn't actually much genuine wheel-to-wheel racing in F1, where land-jets typically race in procession.

What I'd never considered previously was the importance that noise played in motor racing, even though the delights of the Western Springs speedway waft into my living room. I'd always regarded noise as a drum-bursting byproduct of the more essential parts of motor sport, rather than an attractive key player. Wrong.

"It's about the speed, the noise, the smell of the race gas. There is something very nice about the sound of an engine at 8500 revs," says Matt Greenop, the Herald's on-line motoring editor. "A lot of it is about noise. A lot of Kiwis just love loud, fast cars."

They don't come any slower than former Herald staffer and motor racing writer Bob Pearce, who drives like a tortoise but loves watching the horsepower hares.

Pearce remembers when the Rally of New Zealand was actually sold to the public on the noise factor. He also recalls veteran racer Kenny Smithtelling him that the crowds were drawn to the classes emitting the gruntiest noise.

"I'm not a racer or speed freak but I was brought up with motor racing. My uncle drove in the Monte Carlo rally," he says. "To me, motor racing is all about the competition. It's also about realising how brave the drivers are, people with enough guts to get into one of those things."

A few days earlier, the great New Zealand driver Chris Amon had got this piece off to a slow start by allbut dismissing the speed factor inhis career.

"In my case the initial fascination was with exotic type cars, which led to the fascination with fast cars," he said. "Kids can start so young now in karts that the car is less important and it is all about competing.

"I enjoy watching cars go fast but it actually looks a lot faster from the outside than it feels like on the inside.

"Sometimes I think the starts look bloody dangerous and wonder how I used to cope with it. But once you start racing speed means very little, and you tend to use a car like a tennis player uses a racquet or a golfer usesa club.

"What remained with me was trying to get the best out of the car. You might do 300km/h but you want 400km/h. It feels like you are going slowly.

"When it does feel bloody fast is when something falls off."

The wheels were starting to fall off this "need-for-speed" tack and the deadline was looming bloody fast.

Amon continued: "Some of the F1 drivers were pretty wild in the early days and they probably got into it because they were speed freaks. Some of them were rough around the edges. But after a while it is very much about competing rather than a thrill thing. I think the crowd looks at a combination - speed, competition, technique, noise, the general drama.

"If you get near a modern Formula One car, the noise is incredible. That excites a lot of people."

Noise, noise, noise, and you don't have to go to Taupo to hear it. A sub-species has hijacked our roads by sticking exhaust pipes the size of cannons on their tinny little cars.

Maybe this is connected to primal instincts - a territory-protecting roar combined with what might be termed audible plumes to attract a mate.

There are scientific studies which show that loud noise - such as music - removes distractions and narrows attention. People are virtually lifted out of their environment and placed in another world, dominated by the entertainment.

This theory explains why the sound is turned up on advertisements at the movies, trapping you in a world dominated by the product.

There are also evolutionary forces at work, apparently. In pre-amplification days, loud noises were associated with high exertion. In other words, we instinctively relate loudness to major events associated with survival.

Well, those are the theories, and not everyone is fixated by the sound of Kimi Raikkonen making a tin can sound like a jet aircraft. But noise is a massive part of motor racing and even adds to the sense of speed.

Champion motorcycle racer Tony Rees, from Whakatane, says this is supported by his observation of production events where the bikes use standard mufflers. A side-effect of quieter bikes was to make them appear to go even slower.

Rees isn't a total heavy metal man though - he says world MotoGP bosses' demand for the bikes be louder has made them "disgustingly loud". It is the "grunty feeling of power" rather than speed, that really excites, he says.

"It's about the battle not speed. You can be going at 300km/h and you don't even think about it."

There are some famous poster boys, or make that bovver boys, for the delights of speed though, led by the English car show presenter Jeremy Clarkson and his lucky-to-be-alive sidekick Richard Hammond.

Hammond almost died in a rocket car while trying to set a speed record, and celebrated his recovery by buying a motorbike that can also go like a rocket. Bravo.

Clarkson promotes the right to speed with a strange zeal that is alien to the motor racing world.

There is something reckless and rebellious about Clarkson's message, whereas Formula One got over the wild thing a long time ago. Maybe that's because during the 1950s and 60s, there were 50 F1 drivers killed while racing or testing, and 24 more died over the next two decades.

Formula One drivers, it is said, actually see everything on the track comparatively slowly, which is why they are so good.

In his bookInside the Mind of the Grand Prix Driver, Christopher Hilton, amazingly hardly even touches on the speed factor. Rivalries, competition, tactics, personalities, girls - yes. But speed, hardly at all. He does, however, recount the time at Monaco when the late great Ayrton Senna reached a new zone of such effortless, subconscious speed in qualifying that he was suddenly frightened and slowed down.

Which has echoes in this country.

The king of speed in New Zealand is Aucklander Owen Evans, who zipped along a Reporoa road in his Porsche at around 350km/h to set our land speed record in the mid-1990s. He then promptly retired from the sport of setting land speed records.

The record is calculated by averaging the speed over a 1.61km stretch, there and back.

Evans is a top-notch car racer who is guiding a team at Taupo this weekend. Usually calm, his teeth were chattering uncontrollably after completing the first part of the record attempt.

"It's not about touching 350km then backing off. Imagine staying there for 23 seconds," he says.

"That was the fear. The road was so narrow. I got the record and we then put the big horsepower into the car to put the record out of reach for most people. I'll never do it again."

Back at the track, he is a different man. "We were talking about this at a barbecue the other night," he says. "What is the attraction of motor racing? We asked the girls and they said things like they'd rather watch grass grow.

"I just love getting to the race track. My dad raced, you know so many people. It's all about competition and being involved with teams and people with a common interest.

"Speed is good but sometimes it's not speed. I'm usually very calm, I don't sweat a lot, don't panic. We touch 300km/h on the back straight of Pukekohe and it's like driving to the supermarket to me," says Evans "You're actually looking for more power.

"Over the last few years we've run a sports GT class, a thunderous class, with all sorts in it. That sort of stuff really appeals to the crowd - it's very fast but there are turbos, flames. People like close racing, they like the V8s because there is a bit of biff and bash."

A favourite activity for Evans occurs on the cancer charity fundraising days, when he takes fans around the track. It's just another spin for Evans, but for the paying punters the thrill of the track is a circuit.

"It's amazing. Guy after guy hops in the car and they'll say things like they've been coming to the track for 10 or 15 years, and never been in a race car. They've been watching cars go around the circuit and probably thinking it looks fast, but they have never experienced things like the G- forces. They drive a car every day, but they've never had a taste of this."