By alley - Sep 8, 2015, 5:02 PM ET

NEW VIDEO! ON THE LOOSE, ep. 5. RAV4 racer Ryan Millen’s need for two-wheeled speed

Like any racer looking to find those miniscule differences that separate the great from the merely good, Toyota RAV4 rally ace Ryan Millen never truly switches off from thinking about how to be a better, faster driver.

Case in point being Millen's love of downhill mountain biking. It's an adrenaline rush in itself, but it's also a way of conditioning himself to the total concentration and incredible accuracy needed to wring maximum performance from his RAV4 on a loose-gravel rally stage.

In On The Loose, Episode 5, "Tolerance for speed..." Millen demonstrates his two-wheeled skills, and explains how being inch-perfect on a downhill trail crosses over to rallying.

"The sense of speed [on the bike] is very high," he says. "It doesn't really create a fear; it gives you what I call a tolerance for speed. And I think that's probably one of the biggest things in motorsports, keeping your mind trained. That requires the utmost attention and flow and feel."

And just like in rallying, the consequences of a mistake on the mountain bike can be dramatic. Check out episode 5 to find out more...

The back story: Ryan Millen, son of rally legend Rod and a 2014 SCORE Tecate Baja 1000 class winner, is switching to stage rallying this year in a production-based 2015 Toyota RAV4 LE.

Not an obvious choice? You could say that, but the 30-year-old Millen wouldn't have it any other way.

The family-friendly, compact crossover SUV will be competing against rally-honed machinery, including Mini Coopers and Ford Fiestas, in a number of West Coast-based events during 2015.

Sure, it's a challenge, but taking a different approach is what makes it such a compelling project. And Millen is confident that the road car RAV4 is a capable platform from which to develop a competitive rally racer.

RACER.com likes to do things differently, too, so we're following Ryan as he builds, tests and races his RAV4 with our On The Loose video series, plus blogs and feature stories through the year.

The rally RAV4, built to 2WD Open Class rules, sports a stock transmission and a stock 2.5-liter, four-cylinder, double-overhead cam engine that pushes out 176hp and 172lb.ft of torque. Millen and his crew removed more than 500lbs of stock weight, while adding a roll cage, gravel-spec rally tires, and upgrading to front and rear TEIN suspension.

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes of On The Loose. Meanwhile, for more on Ryan, check out

ryan-millen.com

, and to find out more about the 2015 Toyota RAV4, go to toyota.com/RAV4.