If there was ever a day where our jobs don’t seem like work, this would be it: at the TopGear Festival at Sydney Motorsport Park, hanging out with a stunt driving team and the world’s most effervescent hurdler, Michele Jenneke.
We put together a quick video of Miss Jenneke riding the Team D-MAX Iron Summit, a deceptively mild-looking attraction that turned out to be anything but.
We had a run over the Iron Summit, and it’s difficult to describe how incredibly steep it actually is.
As for Michelle, she was fresh from a victorious race against none other than TopGear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who was driving a Toyo-sponsored Team D-MAX ute.
In true Clarkson fashion, he didn’t so much ‘hurdle’ the jumps set up at Sydney Motorsport Park’s pit straight as much as barrel through them. While shouting.
Clarkson was scheduled to drive Bruce Garland’s Dakar-bashing race ute but finding reverse in a sequential gearbox proved a headache Jezza chose to do without, so he pinched one of the Team D-MAX utes for his campaign of carnage.
Jeremy dropped the D-MAX back to Jack Monkhouse and then it was time for some serious two-wheeling.
From the passenger seat, we can attest that it’s every bit as terrifying and enthralling as teetering atop the Iron Summit.
Team D-Max lead driver Jack Monkhouse said that while we may have been white-knuckled and holding our hearts in our throats, there really wasn’t any reason to be afraid.
“We’ve had hundreds of hours learning how to control our cars up on two wheels and over the Iron Summit,” he said.
“And because of the tough construction of our Toyos, you don’t have to worry about the sidewalls flexing and tipping the car over on our two-wheeled runs.
“And the grip of the Toyo Open Country All-Terrain tyres is immense – we can hold the Isuzu MU-X we take over the metal ramp of the Iron Summit on a 45-degree angle using nothing but the footbrake.”
Well, if you had to choose the best way to test the extreme limits of our tyres without taking on the Finke Desert Race, this’d have to be it.
