Extreme Element asked me to try a rally driving experience. I duly obliged.

“It’s not as easy as it looks, is it?”

That’s what my instructor said to me after my first run in the Ford Escort RS2000. Who thinks rally driving looks easy?! I tend to assume that there’s a reason I’m not doing these things professionally. Other people, apparently, are not so realistic.

To be clear, it is as fun as it looks. The Escort is a rear-wheel drive mechanical beast: no power steering, hydraulic handbrake, immediate grunt, and a healthily loose back end. So to speak.

It’s not easy to nail the technique for the perfect handbrake turn (TCP – turn, clutch, PULL!), but it’s satisfying to occasionally string it together and power out of the corner like you’re supposed to. What’s easier is making that rear flick out: just put your boot down, the wheels spin up, job done. Great fun. And it’s no less fun when the drift turns into, well, more of a spin.

There’s a short dirt track in the courtyard of the London Rally School, where you get a chance to ‘master’ these basics before taking to their short mixed-surface special stage – mainly loose surface, just sealed at the hairpins. The Escort is fantastic to throw around on both.

Fast forward through thirty years of rally car development, and the Subaru Impreza WRX is a different matter entirely. There’s no point taking it out on the tight courtyard track; straight to the special stage with you.

The challenge in the Impreza is to take the car to the limit of adhesion, and keep it there – quite unlike the Escort, where the limit of adhesion is just the starting point. It’s about using the impressive power and grip of the Impreza, being patient, keeping it neat and tidy. That makes it less of wild ride, but no less fun – to my way of thinking, at least.

There’s a real joy in feeling grip start to give way, then with a flurry of activity at the steering wheel, save the car from sliding out of control, put the power down, and feel the turbo kick in. Admittedly it’s a bit less slick if your flailing hands happen to turn the wipers on in the process, we’ll just gloss over that.

With up to six drivers per car, you necessarily spent the vast majority of the time waiting around – significantly more than at a track, in my experience. But with tea and biscuits available inside – in a room just off the workshop, which is surely the sign of an operation with its priorities right – and your fellow drivers to watch, it’s not so bad. Timing one of the runs is a nice touch, and gives a bit of substance to the debrief.

I was 7th out of 11, if you’re interested. A well-deserved underachievement, I think you’ll agree.