I don't feel at all

“How do you feel as the start time approaches?”

“I don’t feel at all.”

There’s another one. Interviewer asks if she feels nervous going into a stage blind.

“I prefer it.”

Someone has cut these to eurobeat music. 150-160BPM, high tempo electronic dance music. Synced them with footage of Quattros getting sideways through dusty roads and reaching crowds. This “fancam” format is borrowed from Korean pop-star fan accounts and inspired by Initial D (a Japanese cartoon about drifting) - same energy, same worship, just redirected at a French rally driver born in 1951.

They think she’s describing something superhuman. Built different. Alien.

I hear it and think: yeah. I kinda know that one.

I grew up in rally. Dad competed. I’ve co-driven for him in some of the UK’s hardest off-road races, sat in the passenger seat while the world came at us sideways. Driven some of the same races myself. I marshal too - standing at the side of stages, learning to spot the idiots who plant themselves on the outside of corners because they don’t understand why that’s a stupid place to stand.

So when I watch Group B footage, I don’t see what the fancam kids see. They see sick car go sideways, ice-cool lady no blink. I see spectators standing on the road, the gap between car and human measured in inches. I know what a rally car sounds like, smells like, when it comes past. Group B terrifies me and thrills me in equal measures.

But “I don’t feel at all” - that I understand. On a start line, you can’t feel.

The moment where feeling would get in the way of doing, so feeling stops.

The switch flips and you’re just executing.

No past, no future, just the next thing and the next thing.

I’ve touched it. Not at Mouton’s level - not with a championship on the line, not with Fabrizia Pons beside her reading notes through forests they’d only seen twice, not with men telling journalists they’d be embarrassed to lose to her. But the same switch, flipped in a different arena.

The fancam kids are worshipping something they’ve never been inside. I want to know if hers is the same as mine.

I’d like to meet her. Not to worship - I don’t get starstruck. I’d want to thank her for doing what she wanted when people told her she shouldn’t.

I wouldn’t ask about the championship or the politics. I’d want to know different things. What does she do to unwind? Any weird hobbies? What’s her favourite biscuit? Does she even like eurobeat music?

I know she’s human. That underneath the mythology there’s someone who watches telly and has opinions about Mondays. The fancams turn her into scripture. I want to know if she finds that funny.

Anyway, I hope the fancams are a gateway.

I hope some kid watches “I don’t feel at all” cut to eurobeat and goes looking. Finds the documentaries, finds the full interviews, looks up where their nearest rally is. Makes the pilgrimage - cold morning, flask of tea, standing in a forest waiting for the first car.

I hope the speed and the noise and the adrenaline gets them hooked.

I hope eventually one of them gets in a car. Gets on a start line. And suddenly understands what that quote actually means. Not as content. Not as aesthetic. As the switch flipping in their own head.

“I don’t feel at all.”

I hope it’s a young girl. I hope she watches Mouton and Pons throwing a Quattro through a stage and thinks: I can do this.

Because she can. Rally doesn’t care. The stage doesn’t care. Show up, be quick.

The fancam kids are building a shrine to something they’ve never touched. The shrine’s real, the worship’s real.

But the actual thing’s better. The noise, the gravel, the smell of it. The start line. The switch.

Go find a rally. Feel it for yourself.

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