Petrol Heads’ Corner - Finding My Balance

By David O'Neill*

I have run out of time and the car dealers, believe it or not, have run out of vehicles to enable me to do a car review at this time of the year. However, looking back on the year it is unsurprising that resources are not what they used to be.

2020 has been a year of extremes. Most barristers appear to be flat out with little or no time off. That has brought to the fore the idea of wellness and time out.

As editor of the magazine I was instructed/asked to write about finding balance in what I do outside of my practise of law.

Some of you play golf, some of you go sailing and others might even just read a book. Whatever the case, it is important that you balance your work with pursuits outside of work. We can’t all just sit there and work every day available just because we happen to have the work to do. In this day and age of emails, zoom meetings, texts and other forms of immediate communication it is important to, from time to time, step outside the law and go and do another pursuit completely devoid of anything to do with the law.

It took me some years to appreciate that the world didn’t stop turning just because I decided to take a holiday. I know that Jim Farmer QC is a great supporter of work/life balance. I am as well.

While it may appear to some that I am complete nutty about cars (they are probably right) [subed – we are definitely right] it is still important to have a way to release yourself from your practise. Racing for me has been a real outlet which has allowed me to step away from the law and put to one side communication with the office, communication with clients and thinking about cases.

When I strap myself into the car, slap on the helmet and hook up the intercom system with my co-driver, it’s something that I have to do which is completely divorce myself from the law. Driving along a narrow country road (albeit I’m the only person on it apart from the person ahead of me and the car behind me) at high speed you can’t afford to have your attention waiver for one second.

I was once told by a friend who was sitting in the silly seat on the left-hand side of the car that “every corner has your name on it”. Never was there a truer word said.

I found out to my dismay that when you do focus on something outside the car and your thoughts wander, bad things can happen. It cost me a new car in 2006 when I rolled my, then brand-new rally car, five times and wrecked it.

I went from competitor to spectator in the space of about 10 seconds. Neither myself nor my codriver were hurt at the time. The ache started later in my pocket when I had to rebuild the car.

There is a saying in racing. There are those competitors that have crashed and those who are going to crash. There is no other type of competitor. Most competitors in Targa have crashed. Some have crashed very badly, and on one occasion a competitor lost his leg, and on another, a competitor became confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. One’s heart goes out to those who do suffer injury of a significant nature but, by the same token, we all go into it knowing that there is a risk that something dreadful might happen. In some regard we also believe that it will always happen to “the other guy”.

The thing that I really get out of Targa, quite apart from the thrill of racing, is that it is a complete and absolute break from the law. I don’t think about the law, I don’t communicate with clients and I certainly don’t look at emails through the day. I will have a quick look at them in the evening, but simply put, it is a different type of concentration that is required.

Racing is my thing and you, the reader, might have something else, but in my view it is vitally important that you find ways to get away from the law, get away from the grind of dealing with clients, their problems, their issues, their emotions and also the responsibility of handling what is, to most clients, the most important thing that might happen to them in their lives. If you continue to read this article you’ll probably come to the swift realisation that getting a break from the law by going racing is nuts. You are probably correct.

Of course, there have always been the near misses. I remember on my very first Targa I was (in my mind) whizzing along at breakneck speed and I was being passed on a fairly regular basis. I asked my co-driver (the fellow I bought the car from who was an experienced race car driver himself) if I should go a bit faster. He mumbled yes and we proceeded to go a lot quicker than I really wanted to go to the extent that I didn’t really have much idea of what was going on. However, I do remember one stage where we were whizzing along outside Pukekohe somewhere and the road went up and down and up and down and my codriver was calling the various notes and he called one note and said nothing. We came over a brow of a hill and right in front of me was the yellow tape which means “don’t go down here”. We went through it at about 170kmph. Thankfully, there was a slip road which allowed us to continue down, screech to a halt, reverse and re-join the rally. I wasn’t the first and I certainly wasn’t the last car to do this. The notes called the corner 50 metres after the previous note and it was over the page so at the end of the day it was lucky we had a slip road.

Targa produces some weird and wonderful stories, mainly around crashes. Crashes in Targa are a bit like hitting 6’s in cricket except with a bit more damage. They don’t happen very often, but when they do, they’re usually spectacular. Sometimes they’re caught on film and other times they get told. On one occasion we were racing around Waiouru. It was the weirdest time of the year because it was just after labour weekend and it was snowing. We had been subjected to heat, rain, wind and finally snow. The Australians thought this was a hoot. Most of them had never experienced snow.

Anyway, there was a lengthy complaint posted on the race enquiry board at the end of the day where said car was complaining about not being able to pass another car in front of it. The slower car had careered through a farmer’s fence and then without slowing down managed to go around in the paddock and tear off down the road at breakneck speed. What he didn’t know was that he took about 20 metres of fencing with him and every time he went round a corner the fencing was swinging out from the car, chopping off bits and pieces of bush, decapitating road marker posts at the side of the road and not allowing other cars to pass. Hence this faster car complained about the fact that he was being baulked. Unfortunately, the slower car didn’t know about the fence behind and apparently couldn’t work out why the quicker car wasn’t passing him. It wasn’t until they got to the finish line that the slower car finally realised that he had a fair chunk of a farmer’s fence being towed behind him which was holding up the field.

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve wrecked a car when I rolled it (2006) and then spun in 2018. That was my fault too, because I was trying to eke out the last bit in my tyres and I managed to do so because I got onto a damp piece of road, my back end got around the corner before my front end did, we hit a rock which stopped us going into the river and then skidded off down the road and came to a grinding halt on top of another rock.

Believe it or not we were able to drive out eventually, swap the wheels around, had a quick check underneath and then finished the final stage of the Targa at touring pace but able to get up to about 140 kmh.

The big Targa wasn’t held this year. I was able to compete in the only two smaller Targas in March (pre lockdown) and July (some sort of level 2 or 3). We did ok in both of those, mainly because the fields were quite small and people kept crashing. I think I reported that I won my class in the slowest time in the history of Targa, only because Targa is back next year, hopefully with little restrictions on it, depending on what Covid does to us and, fingers crossed, I’ll be running in it and do all the events.

I hope this finds you all well. Have a great break. We all need it. It’s been a dreadful year in many respects and the work has not stopped coming in. A break is important and you should all take fullest advantage if possible. Ignore/avoid fixtures in January and make the most of the holiday with family. Merry Christmas to all.

Kind regards David

* David O’Neill is a Hamilton barrister, the NZBA treasurer and, a bit of a speed freak... he's the epitome of the fast & furious.