Behind The Wheel: The Noise Of Silence

IT’S NOT THE ‘RADIO controlled-car on steroids’ sound emitted from the motors that grabs my attention; it’s every other noise I’m noticing as I drive the world’s first fully electric rallycross car.

I’m given an induction into HIPER’s various switches and buttons before I set off down the start straight at Greinbach, the former European Rallycross Championship venue. And as I get going, the intense wind noise is bizarre; like sticking your head out of the window on a motorway.

But the other noises are a bigger surprise. The clunking and knocking from the transmission, dampers, ball joints, brake bells… everything. Sounds that every competition car makes, usually drowned out by an engine.

For the hairpin, a tug of the handbrake is required to rotate the car, the lever mounted exactly where you’d expect the gear lever to be in a more conventional machine. Being single-speed, this car has no need for a gear lever at all. Under braking into the medium-speed corners in particular, my right hand involuntarily leaves the wheel, heading for the imaginary gear lever, before my brain reminds itself that the car is fundamentally automatic. I’ve never fully appreciated how much changing down under braking effects chassis balance, until you don’t have to do it!