LEARNING TO FLY COMING DOWN IS THE HARDEST THING.

SEPARATING A CAR from the ground is simple physics. Drive over an incline at a high-enough velocity, and momentum will briefly relieve your tires of their primary function. The higher the velocity or ramp angle, the higher or longer the flight.

- BY ZACK KLAPMAN

Jumping is easy. The trick is landing. Doing so successfully requires technique, planning, and, depending on the length and duration of your flight, possibly some math.

Understanding the hands-on application of that math lesson is why I’m at Rally Ready Driving School in Dale, Texas, outside Austin. Here, ribbons of perfect gravel trails snake through pastures and forest.

I’ve shown up in a 2025 Ford Ranger Raptor, featuring a reinforced frame and suspension with adaptive Fox shocks that make it better suited to aeronautic excursions than a standard Ranger. My instructor is Rally Ready owner Dave Carapetyan, three-time winner of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb Open division. He also won the 2019 Baja 500 Trophy Truck Spec class. He knows his stuff.

He explains that jumping a car is similar to jumping a bicycle: You want to take off with the weight at the back to avoid the “donkey kick,” where the back wheels are pushed upward just as the nose of the car starts to fall back to earth. “If you’re in a race and don’t know what's on the other side of a jump, it’s better to keep the nose up and have the rear wheels touch down first,” he says. To do that, tap the brake just before the ramp at the transition upward from level ground to send the weight to the front, then hit the gas to shift the weight to the rear as you climb the ramp and take flight—it’s a sort of Scandinavian flick on the x-axis. Then land with your foot off the gas to prevent shocking the drivetrain.

Carapetyan demonstrates. The nose of the Ford rises abruptly. We leave the surface of the earth, fly 40 feet down the trail, and touch down with a fairly comfortable gah-lump. The truck seems unimpressed. Surprisingly, I feel calm too.