A little Ford Laser your nana uses to get the groceries or a souped-up racing car? Easy choice, at least if you are Chris Waller.
"If you want to send them around when they're red lighting they're going to burn out quicker than if you're idling along like a grandmother driving to the shops," said Waller in reference to stable favourite I'm Imposing. "I'd rather be getting a little grandmother's car going to the shops than Peter Brock's car when he's finished with it."
Which goes a long way to explaining why Waller's Summer Cup favourite, a rising 10-year-old no less, is still trundling up to the races on a regular basis rather than living the life of a clapped-out retiree in a back paddock. If ever the expression less is more was in search of a poster boy, it would need to look no further than the Villiers Stakes runner-up, which dominates early betting as he seeks to defend his group3 Summer Cup crown at Randwick on Boxing Day.
There has been less work at home, less work on the racetrack and even less distances to cover of late. But I'm Imposing, once hit with a career-threatening tendon injury, is perhaps in the best form of his life.
"The harder you gallop them the more problems they're likely to incur," Waller said. "I guess they've only got a certain amount of miles on the clock.
"We're still learning [about him] and then you refine your training techniques and racing pattern according to a horse's age and their problems. When they get older they don't need as much work and you've got to be a bit kinder to them, and then it's harder to race them over the longer distances, hence the reason he's shortened back to 1500 [metres] to a mile. Friday's [2000m] is even a concern, whether it is too far."
Which might sound an absurd statement considering I'm Imposing delivered Waller his first Summer Cup win last year over the same trip, but the trainer adapts, just as his horses do.
It means close misses like the Villiers, when Rudy kept the race after apprentice Luke Tarrant came within 100 grams of handing it to I'm Imposing after weighing in light, take a little getting over.
"When you spend so much time with them and when they've been in the stable for so long you do get close to them," Waller said. "He might not be a group 1 horse, but he's in the stable just as much as your Foretellers and some of those other horses. He is a special horse and the Villiers last start ... it was frustrating he didn't win. The Summer Cup is probably not quite the Villiers, but he won it last year, you're defending the title and he's a year older. It does mean a lot."
Waller's Summer Cup defence won't be limited to the topweight with Tye Angland's services. He will also saddle up the temperamental Hoylonny and Wyong Gold Cup hero Multilateral as part of a three-pronged attack.
Waller – along with punters – has long stopped trying to solve the riddle that is Hoylonny, would-be world beater one week and nothing like it the next.
"You're going into the race blind," Waller said. "It's a hard one for punters, owners and trainers because you don't really know.
"You owe it to those types of horses to give them another preparation provided they are winning prizemoney on the preparation before. That's where he's at. If he races well this prep, he'll get another turn, but he's got to shape up and pay his way."
But there might be a little more confidence about Multilateral, which should be ready to peak third-up over the right trip after a slashing first-up run. "Up to a suitable distance and if we got a shower of rain I think that will play into his hands," Waller said.
