Rod Millen - The Cutting Edge

1. 
   CATCHING THE BUG
   EARLY DAYS
2. 
   
3. 
   
4. 
   DEFENSIVE DRIVING
5. 
   TAKING IT TO THE FINNISH
6. 
   FOREIGN CLIMBS
7. 
   PEAK PERFORMANCE
8. 
   HORSES FOR COURSES
9. 
   FOR THE RECORD
10. 
    LEADFOOT

Most men approaching retirement probably have a fantasy of how it will be. Many probably picture coming home to a grand house at the end of an imposing, tree-lined driveway. Inside, your wife awaits with a fire in the grate, a fortifying drink already mixed, your well-worn slippers beside your favourite chair and depending on your individual energy levels a mischievous gleam in her eye.

Well, my fantasy is broadly similar apart from certain key details. Shelly features, of course, wearing an indulgent smile, but she meets me at the other end of the imposing driveway. The house way up beyond is comfortable, if not exactly grand, but Im more focused on the driveway. It has been raining softly, and the evening sun lights the driveway up like a shining ribbon.

Shelly has delivered the car to the gate, its engine, tyres and brakes warm, and she has my helmet and my gloves. I put them on and slip into my favourite seat, the drivers seat. The car fits me like a well-worn slipper.

Shelly has chosen well. Shes selected the Toyota Celica that I built back in 1994 to have a serious crack at Pikes Peak. It has more power here than on the Peak: were at sea level here in Hahei, rather than at 10,000 feet on the Peak where the air is thinner. Down here, the Celica will develop something like 1000 brake horsepower, and deliver it to the road through all four wheels. My eye drifts over the driveway as it twists sensuously before me, beckoning me.

Back when we were pegging the driveway out I am a surveyor by training, and well used to this exercise a neighbour called in, cast a critical eye over the line switching to and fro up the hillside, and told me that I could have done it in a single, sweeping curve.

Well, that was never going to happen, I replied comfortably.

The terrain dictated much of what we did, but I imposed my will, my vision, to the maximum extent possible. Im used to this partnership, too. Its much like what Ive done in my career as a rally driver: the conditions, the weather, the topography are all a given; what you do within those constraints is limited only by your imagination and your nerve.

Weve added ornaments here and there. The barn came early because, after all, we needed to keep the cars somewhere. We had a little stream to span, so we put in a stone bridge; Ive always fancied a nice stone bridge. And lately weve put a gas station down on the flat. For the purposes of the resource consent, its a storage shed, and any close resemblance it bears to a gas station perched in a Midwestern prairie is purely coincidental.

But the driveway is the main event. Most of what it does is inspired by pieces of road I have raced around the world. Its length is similar to the distance I covered in the very first car I raced, back in 1968 where it all began, at a hill climb at Andersons Farm near Albany, north of Auckland. And when they come to play at the Leadfoot Festival, some of my old mates from those Andersons Farm days probably experience a bit of dj vu, the same pang of nostalgia that I get, when they pass between the fence posts near the start. Daytona Corner speaks for itself. Anyone who knows Pikes Peak will know where I got the idea for the hairpins. I set an Unlimited Class record on Pikes Peak that stood for thirteen years actually, it still stands, given that the only faster times have been set since the road was sealed. The inspiration for other bends and wiggles is less obvious, even to me, recalling as they do dozens of bits of road, and possibly none that exist in reality but only in some dream.

I shake off the memories, and the reverie. Driving demands attention. Driving fast requires complete concentration.