Passenger rides with Mark

Posted by Eddie Corr on Thursday, December 11, 2003

I had many passenger rides with Mark in the rally car. I've a very fond memory of the way he often muttered under his breath 'Come on my son!' when he needed to push himself harder.

I've borrowed the piece below, it sums it all up best;

One overall impression of my ride remains; a sensation of having entered another world. A first class driver allowed me to visit the place where he is home. During those few minutes we were in a capsule, a cocoon, shut away from the familiar values of action, reaction, velocity. The old world was still there around us, but it had nothing to do with us. We were enlosed in our own world. Different laws applied. Everything was magnified. The most delicate movement on a control produced intense response. A maneouver which, from the outside, looks easy and gentle, is a maelstrom of violence from the inside. A place on the road which looks from the outside to be a disturbing bump is not even perceived from within the car. The stage, made up of seemingly unrelated curves and straights and hummocks, becomes a single long file of problems to be solved, presenting themselves to the driver like a stream of tracer bullets. All the passenger is able to do is follow, tardily, a few of the driver’s more obvious solutions. When he appreciates that in fact the driver is coping with every problem precisely and punctually, and furthermore that he is actively with his right foot trying to make them come at him even faster, then the passenger’s admiration rises in his throat. He would cheer but he knows his voice would be as nothing against the bellow of the car.