Driving a rally car at speed is exhilarating. The sheer rush of controlling a car on a narrow road in between what are mostly immovable objects, is one of the biggest buzzes that you can have. The feelings that you will get from driving a rally car will take you through a broad range of emotions, and you will experience a massive high both during and after each drive that you take in a rally car. The ultimate end result is of having an amazing feeling of controlling the uncontrollable. That's what rallying is... The euphoria of conquering all the odds. The faster you go, the greater the euphoria.

Approaching a rally begins with a mixture of nervous anxiety, and a tremendous anticipation of what is about to come, and how you will deal with certain parts of the course, and certain tricky bits of road that may stick in your mind, from when you wrote your pacenotes a day before (in pacenoted events). Your mind will replay these images, and you will probably talk to your co-driver about these parts, in an attempt to seek a little consolation that "It's ok." Other Pieces of road will remain in your mind as amazing, and so you will not be able to get there fast enough... Like a long fast opening right hand bend that ends with a rise over a crest, that you know you can take 'flat out'. If you have driven at speed on the road before, the feeling will be magnified, as you have some familiarity with how your car will move as you steer into the bend, and become "light" across the crest.

As you sit on the start line of the first special stage you will feel really, really nervous, and will probably be trembling with the blend of adrenalin, anticipation, and excitement for what lies in front of you. The control official will count you down (or there is a visual red and green light system), and as you get to within 15 seconds of the start, every part of your being is ready.... ready to go. As your engage first gear, your co-driver will repeat the first 2 or 3 instructions to you (it could be 100 9 left into 10 right into 7 right), and so your hands will grip the steering wheel in anticipation of the left and two right bends.

Then in the amazing last few seconds before you launch, you will shift into total certainty that you can control it all.... and then suddenly all hell breaks loose, and you are away, and after the initial wheelspin, you are charging down a narrow rally special stage, shifting up through the gears. You are totally and completely focussed. Eyes wide open. Pulse heightened. Breathing fast. Racing towards the 9 left. You keep your right foot hard down in each gear and begin to turn the steering wheel. Then the real buzz starts. The back end is drifting nicely while you position the front with total accuracy into the apex of the bend. In a flash you are past it, going up 1 more gear and straight into the 10 right with the heartbeat beginning to settle, as you feel total control of all around you. The trees are pushing past, although you don't see them. You are totally focussed on the bend ahead, which is a right, and so you left foot brake a little, to slide the tail around a touch as you steer the front end into the tighter turn. You go back down 1 gear to set up for the power run out of the turn and squeeze your right foot flat to the floor - a massive rush. This sensation is like nothing else on land or in the air, as it so real, so immediate, so "now". It is the sense of being immortal, of being beyond the realms of normal human emotion. It is the feeling of being completely alive, to have awoken from a dormant state. It is the feeling of being on the edge, and yet not falling over, of defying all the rules. It is one of the last bastions of true freedom.. it is.. rallying!