Rally Quest

I won’t bore you with another of my ‘life has a funny habit of getting in the way of your plans...’ TED talks. Needless to say, it has continued to do so. In short, building your own house in the middle of a global pandemic, while also becoming a father and working at a start-up does not leave a lot of room for very much else. However, since the last Rally Quest  outing I have managed a squeeze in a few baby steps along the way. I've been hammering my sim rig, learning about trail braking, tyre management and race-craft. Also, I acquired all the protective fireproof gear I'll need for any upcoming adventure, bar a crash helmet which I'll borrow for now. But the most significant step has been upgrading my car to something I can learn to race in – a Toyota GT86. It’s not very powerful for a sports car, but it’s a dream to drive as I found out when I took it to another track cruise in January. It's actually quite a sensible car when you think about it... It's a Toyota ...

After this dreadful year I think we can all reflect on the statement I opened 2020 with: ‘life has a funny habit of getting in the way of your plans...’ though maybe I’ll remove the word ‘funny’ after this year. Rally Quest, like pretty much everything, has been turned upside-down by old Daddy Covid. March 2020 My Track Cruise appetiser in February left me ravenous for more motorsport bites. I was keen to kick on with the rest of my Rally Quest plans for the year.  I’m a lucky boy – several members of my family (and avid Rally Quest readers I assume) generously chipped in to buy me the V8 Muscle Car experience I’d planned for. Wherever did they get the idea? Now, cast your mind back to the beginning of the year (approximately 36 years ago). Something was looming on what seemed like the distant horizon. Daddy Covid had first paid a visit to New Zealand in late February. It was only a few cases and seemingly spreading slowly by my birthday in mid-March. I was on the verge of bookin...

Last week I was due to take the wheel of a V8 mustang and experience its brutal power around Hampton Downs. But as my old man says : ‘life has a funny habit of getting in the way of your plans...’ Phase two of Rally Quest 2020 was, like everything else, put on indefinite hold due to... you know what. So, in the meantime I have, like everyone else, been finding ways to cope with lockdown and battle with boredom. Thankfully my hobby, sim racing*, is almost tailor-made for an isolation scenario. It’s an entertaining way to spend long hours by yourself indoors. There’s always more to learn, more time to gain and you can always sense your progression, no matter how glacially slow it can be. Your competitors take it seriously enough that it feels like it means something when you do well. It can be fun, frustrating and often genuinely exhilarating. *Sim racing, is the emerging esport of simulated motoracing. Most F1 teams now also have a dedicated sim racing team and during this lockdo...

Last weekend my co-driver (wife) and I took a leisurely Sunday drive to Hampton Downs Motorsport Park for my first Rally Quest mission of the year – a Track Cruise  –  an event described as “six laps of the racetrack behind our safety car with family and friends in the car with you.” The idea was to have a little pootle around a real big boys track, get the feel of it, then come back with confidence for a more serious event later. The prestigious home of New Zealand motorsport turns out to be a few warehouses and a humble pit lane scattered around a track. The ‘spectator area’ is basically a few logs bolted to a hillside. We eventually found the nondescript office and awaited the briefing. It was, no joke, less than two minutes long. Here, dear reader, is pretty much the entire briefing: If your car breaks-down pull off the track and don’t get out, unless you are on fire, in which case, get out. Don’t drive like a dick-head, don’t go over 120kph and don’t overtake unless you...

Welcome back avid followers of Rally Quest (yes, both of you), it’s been a while. I did say this thing would probably take years, didn’t I? Here's what's been happening. 2019 Cast your mind back to March 2019. I’d just finished my weekend at Rally School. I was chomping at the bit to progress to the next level – buy a car, strip it out, chuck in some recaros and start competing... become a rally driver . But as my old man says: ‘life has a funny habit of getting in the way of your plans...’ My wife Annabel and I owned a 1-bedroom flat at the time, but we wanted to move to a bigger place. Not long after Rally School an idle tire-kick of an enquiry to our local real-estate agent quickly led to us listing, then getting a rather high offer– way more than we’d thought possible. Out of nowhere, another life's dream suddenly came into view. 10 years ago I would have said it’ll never happen . 2 years ago I would have said maybe in 10 years . But in the middle of last year, t...

Day 1. Saturday. I woke up at 5am on the morning of rally school with my mind racing. I was experiencing a curious combination of forgotten emotions – half 8 year-old me on Christmas day, half 18 year-old me on A-level exam day. I tossed and turned until 7, necked a quick coffee and was off. Two hours down a foggy State Highway 1 later, I arrived at Rally Drive NZ HQ. In true Kiwi tradition, this centre of engineering excellence was a large shed in the middle of nowhere. I stopped for a few moments to admire the phalanx of rally spec Mitsubishis parked on the verge, then headed inside. The cavernous workshop was crammed with rally paraphernalia, well-used tools and cars in various stages of undress. The owner of the Rally School, Dale Perry, was presenting a pristine Mk2 Escort that he had built specifically for the Colin McRae to the students who has arrived early. After introductions and a while chatting about Dale’s colourful 40 year rally history we took to our seats...

Every hero knows, you need a noble steed to carry you on your quest. And at the risk of stating the obvious, you can't rally without a car. I'll be shedding a lot of blood, sweat and tears on this quest, so finding a trusty and loyal 4-wheeled companion is crucial. I learned from Motorkhana that you can take pretty much any car to a rally event, if you have enough – what I like to euphemistically call – ' imagination ’ (time + money + passion + stupidity). Cars of all shapes and sizes were being thrown around the track with gay abandon. Think of any make and model of car. Now add the word 'rally’ and type it into Google. With near certainty I can say that some lunatic, somewhere has turned that car into a rally car. You want an Aston Martin Vantage rally car? Sure: A Volvo 240? No problem: A Toyota Prius? Yeah, here you go you, weirdo: So what car am I going to get? My first instinct was that – obviously – I was going to buy a fire-breathing 1998 S...

I set out this morning with my pal Dan for a little roady. The first objective was for me to get reacquainted with driving a manual car to prepare myself for Rally School, so I was the designated driver in Dan’s Ford Focus. The second was to check out Hibiscus Coast Motorsport Club’s Motorkhana event. After two dozen wrong turns around Ranui we finally found the event tucked away behind a BMX park, in a field. Camping out by the entrance was Gavin and his Mitsubishi. He clocked me straight away and introduced himself. In classic kiwi-bloke style he was humble and quietly spoken. I pestered him with a few more questions about the specifics of the event and he gladly filled me in. There are two sets of coned tracks throughout the day, and each competitor gets two runs at each set. You can hit a cone, but knock it over, or move it off its starting point and you get a five second penalty. Go the wrong way and it’s basically a void run. Simple. We looked over to the other side of...

In the past I had flirted with the idea of getting involved in track motorsport. My (admittedly cursory) research indicated that you needed a vast reservoir of cash, expert knowledge of equipment and a semi-professional level of mechanical engineering. And that’s before you’ve even sat in a car. Due to having none of the above, nor having a clue how to obtain the above, I rapidly abandoned all hope. My early research into rally was no different. Like every self-respecting millennial, my first stop was to trawl through YouTube. The first few guides I stumbled across seemed pitched at people already competing in motorsport, with the financial means and technical knowledge to get started right away. The guys in those videos were experienced petrolheads, talking in a foreign language of limited-slip differentials and toe-angles. If I rocked up to one of their events, I would surely be exposed as an imposter within minutes, and strung up – an example to others to stay away. Right? It alm...

The year is 1998, and I am 11 years old. In my bedroom in Hampshire, England, I stare intently at a vast beige computer monitor, mesmerised. A pixelated, but beautifully curved backside dances around on the screen. It’s the Subaru Impreza S4 Rally . I grip my Logitech Steering Wheel with sweaty palms and tussle with this grunting blue beast. We are charging across the gravel tracks of New Zealand, crashing through muddy fields, over crests and into trees. I’m playing Codemasters ’ Magnum Opus: Colin McRae Rally and it’s the best thing ever. 1998 was the year rally barrelled off the road and smashed into my consciousness. The era of rally that accompanied my adolescence (‘95–’03) helped cement the sport in my imagination. It was a time of homegrown success with Colin McRae and Richard Burns , and exciting, hard fought campaigns. With the exception of Marcus Grönholm in 2002, each of the 1997–2003 seasons were won by an average margin of only three points. The 2001 seaso...