KEY POINTS:
Hanging by his safety harness, inside his belly-up car, ribs badly bruised and only three quarters of the way up the United States' Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was not where Marty Roestenburg wanted to be.
He had clocked 7min:53secs through the 3895m time check last Sunday and was on target for a strong finish at 4300m chequered flag but disaster struck.
"I think I was just going a bit too fast," Roestenburg says reflectively, after returning to New Zealand - the country's only competitor in the Colorado Springs race - this week.
"I smacked into the mountain and bounced upside down."
From what he can piece together, he took a wide entry into the gravel-based Bottomless Pit corner and the tarmac tyres holding his space-frame Mitsubishi Evo 8 on terra firma refused to bite.
The 800hp, 850kg beauty he leased from his Manukau neighbour and former Pike's Peak campaigner Andrew Hawkeswood was "not looking quite so lovely" after its crash.
"Nothing money can't fix," a resigned Roestenburg says.
He was one of 20 competitors - including exactly half of his 10-competitor class - out of the 186 cars and motorbikes who did not finish the 20km pilgrimage to the race to the clouds' pinnacle.
The slick track meant winner Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima was 17secs slower this year in his 1000hp Suzuki Sport XL7, settling for a tardy 10min:18sec, compared to his 2007, 10min:01sec effort.
None-the-less, the "world's fastest Maori" is not one for excuses or what ifs and after explaining his fate, Roestenburg launches straight into next year's plans.
"If we can put together a competitive package with six months (2008), with 12 months (2009) we can hopefully put together a successful challenge on the mountain."
He is already talking with a main sponsor about the possibility of taking a two-car team over.
Adding extra personnel to the two-man-band (Roestenburg and chief engineer Norman Soo) will be a must as too many hours burning the midnight oil to keep the Mitsubishi running took their toll.
"Come race day there's not a lot of petrol left in the tank," he says, referring to himself, not the aerodynamic Evo."
Remarkably up-beat for someone nursing a blackened torso and a wallet in the red, he sums the whole experience up positively.
"I'm rapt that we went there and did it.
"I'm very keen to go back next year and finish the 15 corners that I missed."
