Rally Car: What the Internet Has For Breakfast

So, how was your weekend? Restful? Peaceful, with only the sound of the Masters to interrupt (or bring on) a long afternoon's nap? That's nice. Really nice.

While you were snoozing on the couch and watching men in slacks play slow-motion solo hockey on grass (golf,) the hard working men of rally car racing were doing their ho-hum standard thing: racing across rutted dirt tracks at 135 miles an hour just so you could have videos to gawk at while you're supposed to be working.

That actually isn't new (though it popped up on Break.com's endless rotation of people falling off things or being injured in backyard stuntwork.) It comes from the 2007 Jim Clark Manx Race, where Barry Johnson, the driver/pilot of the car in the video, hit the crest of a hill doing somewhere around 135 miles an hour.

Johnson broke three vertebrae in his back on the landing, bent the works in the under carriage, started an oil fire resulting from the damage to the car, and traveled sixty feet through the air. He also gave good quote afterwards:

On a lighter note; when i was in A+E the doctor came in and asked what had happened. I explained it went like this; I was doing 220KPH down the road, he said what type of road, i said single track back road.Then i took off on a jump and flew 60 metres and landed heavily... He said "your in the wrong hospital mate the mental hospital is 5 miles up the road."

Barry Johnson is awesome, especially since despite the injuries and tremendous damage to the car, he thought the jump was totally worth it. TOP SCORE, sir--we'll ride in the passenger seat and hold the clipboard for you anytime.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.