2000. Alastair decides to take part in Porsches racing in order to evaluate how good he is as a driver.

When you're rallying it’s very difficult to tell how competitive a driver you are because everyone’s in different cars. Even if you’ve got an Austin Healey and another guy has the same car he might have different tyres, a different engine and so on. I decided to do a season’s racing in Porsche 924s in the Hancook series to see if I could stand up as a driver.

The Porsche 924s all had the same horsepower and they weighed the same with the driver, which is important: you could be a big fat old boy and it didn’t matter because the midget teenager had to ballast his car to weigh 1000kilos. Everything was identical and so it was reasonable to say that the race was even.

I did this for a season just to see if I could keep up. And I could keep up, for an old boy I did alright. I never managed to win one but I came second, third and fourth. I qualified fourth in my first race to the absolute rage of some of the competitors who’d been doing it for years. 

It proved to me that I didn’t like motor racing very much even though I’d been involved in motor racing my whole life. Back in Formula 1 I didn’t do the racing myself and I can’t imagine why anyone would be fixated enough to drive the car round and round in circles all day. It’s so much better rallying because you come to a different corner and a different road that you’ve never seen before in your life. You get frightened and have to make massive amounts of adjustments mentally and physically. You’ve got exhaustion, you’ve got navigation, you’ve got all these things that you just don’t have in racing. In racing you’ve got nothing but the track and the car and the only thing that can make it interesting is somebody trying to pass you or some rain.

• 1943 Alastair's early years
• 1955 Licence to drive
• 1957 Alastair's High School years
• 1959 Evading the police
• 1960 Becoming a mechanic
• 1966 The Tasman series
• 1966 Leaving New Zealand
• 1967 Joining McLaren
• 1967 CanAm Door Catches
• 1967 Monza
• 1968 South Africa
• 1968 CanAm
• 1969 Driving the Formula 1 Cars
• 1973 Fittipaldi joins McLaren
• 1973 McLaren Team manager
• 1974 Montezemolo
• 1975 Hunt replaces Fittipaldi
• 1975 Hunt gets paid little
• 1976 Inventing the Air-Starter
• 1976 Six-speed Gear Boxes
• 1976 Misbehaving in Canada
• 1976 Japan
• 1977 Adidas Uniforms
• 1977 Changing Tyres
• 1977 Leaving McLaren
• 1979 Nelson Piquet
• 1980 Skirts on Formula 1 Cars
• 1981 Leaving Formula 1
• 1982 Making Lists
• 1982 Signing on
• 1982 Creating Space Station
• 1991 Highland Fling
• 1991 Classic Marathon
• 1992 Getting the Austin A35
• 1992 El Salvador
• 1993 Carerra Panamerica
• 1993 Centre of attention
• 1993 Nicest car in rally
• 1993 LeJog
• 2000 London to Sydney
• 2000 Porsche Racing
• 2000 Porsche Crashing
• 2001 Ferrari
• 2001 Inca Trail
• 2004 Berlin - Moscow - Berlin
• 2005 World Cup Rally
• 2007 Norway
• 2008 Liège-Brescia-Liège
• 2008 An Icelandic Odyssey
• 2008 North & West Africa
• 2009 West Coast America
• 2009 London to Casablanca
• 2010 New Zealand Festival of motor racing
• 2010 New Zealand Big Sky Adventure