Video: how not to jump a rally car

Any armchair rally enthusiast will tell you that jumping a rally car is easy. All you need to do is: point rally car at jump, pin throttle, hit jump, relax as you’re sent massively airborne, admire the view as revs bounce off the limiter, then wait for the suspension to do its thing when you come back to terra firma. Repeat. Easy, eh? 

But it turns out it’s not that easy. Just let the video above of World Rally Championship-2 driver Quentin Gilbert allow you to reacquaint yourself with the sheer ballsiness and skill needed to ponk a rally car off Rally Portugal’s jumps.

See, at last weekend’s rally, Quentin and his co-driver Renaud Jamoul were navigating their way through a stage when they came up to a hefty crowd-lined jump. Not wanting to disappoint the fan’s excitement, they kept it pinned all the way to the jump until the road literally fell away in front of them. However, once airborne, Quentin backed out of the throttle – sending the weight of the car forward – so it face-planted the floor and then into a roly-poly of embarrassment at the landing. 

Obviously, the fans loved it. The whole reason they stand in the sun all day is to watch people crash. But we’re glad to say that both Quentin and Renaud were fine, managing to escape the car and inform oncoming cars of the rather large, bent Skoda over the blind crest. Remember guys; when in doubt, throttle out!