Shaken Gilmour ready for rally

Rolling a Subaru Impreza WRX at 150kmh can really mess with your head as Chris Barclay discovered when talking to New Zealand's leading female rally driver Emma Gilmour.
Rally map

Emma Gilmour has driven head first into one corner she can't cut with impunity – the long road to recovery from 17 lost minutes.

The 27-year-old has a clear vision of what she wants to achieve during the Rally of New Zealand through Waikato this weekend, though her chances of success will probably remain blurred until she completes a third and final super special stage at Mystery Creek on Sunday.

Ideally by then she would have placed the legacy of a high speed crash in Northland three months ago firmly in her rear view mirror.

That will be no easy feat for Gilmour, one of two New Zealand scholarship winners powered to compete as wildcards in the 11th round of the FIA World Rally Championship.

While her rivals have been poring over pace notes before tomorrow's opening stages, Gilmour has had to combine that chore with staring at a yellow square on a sheet of A4 paper while shaking her head from side to side.

"It sounds really odd," she admitted, before today's traditional – and ironically named – `shakedown' at the rally's service centre.

"I have to put in on a blank wall and stand there and just shake my head at it and keep my focus. You do it fast enough so it's not blurred.

"The brain has to recircuit; I'll have to do it another couple of months."

To break up the monotony she also places the paper on a chess board or tries the exercise while walking.

Before her self analysis Gilmour was examined at a head injury clinic in Dunedin, where her head was shaken from side to side while she attempted to read an optometrists' eye chart at speed.

"I guess it's quite similar to rally driving," she said, "because we're bouncing around trying to focus."

That battery of tests proved she had been knocked around harder than she first suspected, although getting behind the wheel of a new car for the national championship round in Wairarapa also confirmed she was some way short of a 100 per cent recovery.

"It was too soon. I was still getting dizzy on road sections going round left handers.

"It's not the smartest thing to have done, but I felt I had to repay everyone."

After all, her dedicated team had basically built her a brand new car – the original was beyond repair – and had it up to spec in 2½ weeks.

Her Dunedin community also rallied round, raising $30,000 to inadvertently ratchet up the pressure – and although determined to buckle up, when the gearbox cracked on day two it was actually a blessing in disguise.

"I was starting to get frustrated because you know how fast you should be going," she confessed.

"It was a co-ordination thing. Rally driving is very instinctive and when I was in the process of applying the brakes or the throttle I was a couple of milliseconds behind where it should have happened."

Undeterred Gilmour backed up for the Rally of Hawke's Bay earlier this month, but the nagging headaches remained.

"I knew I should have been keeping it (accelerator) flat but subconsciously you're lifting off.

"I underestimated how long it's going to take to get over everything and get the confidence back."

Part of that rehabilitation process has not involved watching the accident Gilmour has no recollection of.

"I haven't watched it, the boys have, but I've listened to it and I'm surprised it stops so quickly.

"I'd thought we'd roll a long time but it's really just a couple of really quick impacts."

Those collisions with rolling farmland loosened her seat, the reason her helmet smashed and she lost consciousness.

"I was out for a couple of minutes and I don't remember the whole 15 minutes after the accident."

The bruising to her arms and legs has long since healed and despite logging serious hours behind the wheel leading into this week, Gilmour concedes she's still a work in progress.

"If I was just going to do an office job I'd be fine but because I'm in a specialised kind of work – and you're bouncing around in there – you really notice when your head's not back to where it was."

Still, whatever transpires on Waikato's gravel, there's no career u-turn on the horizon. Take it easy behind a desk? Where's the fun in that?

- NZPA