Video: Rallying a bike-engined buggy makes the WRC look easy

In case you think that the Dakar Rally is the only extreme rally that happens ever year, think again. Not only is there a world championship for Rally Raid, as it’s called, but there are also national and even regional championships for such manic machines.

The reason it sounds like there’s a motorbike engine propelling this vivid yellow plastic machine through the French countryside, is that there is. Driver Peio Amestoy’s machine has a Suzuki bike engine in the middle, sending power to the back wheels.

But the biggest thing that you come away with after watching this video is just how rutted the roads that this French rally championship uses are. These are the kind of tracks you would call a green lane in the UK, but Amestoy’s brilliant machine – complete with sequential transmission – deals with it all with no issues.

It looks and sounds brilliant and you cannot help but marvel at how these tight, twisting stages make some of the roads the WRC uses look open and easy.