Rally drivers compete with a lot of obstacles while pushing their cars hard on some of the world’s most challenging racing conditions. Road conditions vary greatly across the miles of a given stage with hazards typically lining the road mere feet away, all the while trying to hear the pace notes from the codriver informing them what’s coming up in the next couple hundred yards. Rally driving is almost as much a mental exercise as a physical one. That’s what makes the occasional large animal suddenly appearing around a bend particularly taxing, as Martin Rowe and Nathalie Richard found out in the Canadian Rally Championship’s 2014 Pacific Forest Rally.
As Rowe steers his Subaru around a long right-hand bend, he spots a cow standing directly on that corner’s apex just as he’s aimed for it. He manages to stand on the brakes and keep the nose pointed forward enough to steer (sorry) clear of the first cow, only to find a handful more standing on the road. One certainly hopes they’re just rally fans who escaped from a nearby farm to watch the stage in a Disney-esque caper, though clearly they’re more like the rally fans of the Group B era, clearly. Either way, the evasion works well enough with Rowe and Richard carrying on unperturbed, though the stage was certainly no milk run (sorry again).
Damn dumbest, big animals on the planet. Nice work on the driver’s part – he kept going quick enough to show them who’s boss, but slow enough, just in case one of those dummies couldn’t make up its mind which way to go. It’s even better rolling up to a remote radio site in a white truck, when the ranch hand who feeds them drives a white truck, as well – especially when they’re hungry.