When the boss told me I was going to get behind the wheel of a rally car, I couldn’t have been more excited. Until I got to Rally School Hunter Valley and was met with cars sliding through the dirt at breakneck speed… that’s when I really needed to go to the toilet!
Rally School Australia has six locations across the country, one in the Hunter Valley, another in Colo Heights, then Ipswich, Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne. I went to the Hunter Valley location, hidden in the bush at Cessnock.
I booked in for the ‘XLR8 Package’, which included a pro hotlap ride and I got to drive eight laps with an instructor. There were about a dozen of us who turned up on a sunny Saturday afternoon to speed around the track, and I was pleased to see I wasn’t the only woman… there were two of us!
Jason who is the co-owner of Rally School Hunter Valley talked us through driving on the dirt compared to driving on tar in the real world. Jason was hilarious, he certainly calmed any nerves we had with a few laughs. He owns the school with his wife Katie who assigned us our cars and instructors.
Don’t stress if you can’t drive a manual, there is a Toyota 86 paddle shift as well as the manual options including a Mitsubishi Lancer EVO and a Subaru Impreza.
I jumped in the Toyota 86 with instructor Paul.
Paul was great, he told me exactly what to do as we drove around and after the first couple of laps, I started to get more comfortable putting my foot down!
By the last lap I felt like I had really gotten the hang of it and didn’t have a problem flying around the corners with Paul telling me exactly what I needed to do.
Then it was time for the hot lap… and it was HOT.
It felt like it was over in 30 seconds from the moment I jumped in the Mitsubishi EVO with Jason, to the moment we were around the track and back at the starting line. Jason’s reflexes were unbelievable, we flew around the track, sliding around the corners at an incredible speed. It was unreal.
You can certainly see why the instructors and the track are used by professional rally car drivers. One of those is the Hunter Valley’s own Taylor Gill who just finished in 1st Place in Sweden taking out the opening round of the Junior World Rally Championship (WRC) and WRC3 honours at Rally Sweden.
“Taylor is one of our instructors that we sponsor overseas competing, he’s worked for us for about four years. It’s a good training ground for our instructors; they get a lot of time in the cars and they’re always developing their skills,” said Katie.
Katie and Jason have owned Rally School Hunter Valley for just over a year after working for the business for the last eight years.
“We hope everyone leaves with a smile on their face! We want to deliver a lot of fun and if we can open people’s eyes to what rallying is al about that’s a bonus!”
| For more information: https://rallyschool.com.au/about-rally-school/ |
