A police pursuit from Taupiri to Huntly ended in the arrest of Julian Chandra, 36.

A man who smashed his car into two police cars and ran over a constable's foot then raced over a railway crossing while the barrier arm was down, narrowly avoiding an oncoming train.

Randwick Park man Julian Praneel Chandra, 36, was in the grip of a serious methamphetamine addiction when he led police on a dangerous - if not death-defying - flight from Taupiri to Huntly on August 2 last year.

Details of the pursuit, which began when Chandra was spotted speeding by police on the Waikato Expressway about 1.30pm that day, were revealed at his sentencing in the Hamilton District Court this month.

Chandra knew he was not meant to be behind the wheel, having been indefinitely disqualified in 2013 for a string of driving while disqualified charges. He was also out on bail on previously-laid drugs charges.

Regardless, he put his foot down and headed north, onto Great South Rd and into Huntly. The police followed.

It was obvious that Chandra's high-speed and erratic manner of driving constituted a danger to the public, so police laid road spikes.

He spotted them in time, drove around them and then on and through a red traffic light.

More road spikes were laid and again Chandra avoided them, this time by reversing his car into two police cars. He then accelerated forward, over the foot of one of the officers who was trying to detain him.

He then zoomed over a railway crossing. The barrier arms were down and a train was coming, but Chandra did not let that stop him, making it through before the locomotive arrived.

Eventually the police forced his car off the road in a cul-de-sac in Huntly. But Chandra was not going quietly and the police had to pepper spray and taser him in a bid to subdue him.

At one point, while he was still in the car, he got hold of a black-handled knife and threw it at a female police officer. His aim was off, however, and the knife landed on the ground about a metre away from her.

The officer whose foot was run over was taken to Waikato Hospital, but did not require ongoing treatment.

Following his arrest, Chandra embarked on a less-frenetic journey through the courts, a journey which came to an end when he appeared before Judge David Wilson QC on Tuesday for sentencing on a raft of charges.

These included aggravated injury, assault with a weapon, reckless driving, failing to stop for police, driving while disqualified, possession of methamphetamine, possession of cannabis and breaching the conditions of a prior intensive supervision sentence.

Chandra's counsel Scott McKenna said his client was now doing his best to rid himself of a methamphetamine addiction that had ruined his life. He had recently been accepted into an intensive rehabilitation programme in Auckland and had reconnected with his parents, from whom he had become estranged in recent times.

Chandra had no specific malice towards the constable he had injured, McKenna said, and he had driven over the man's foot as a matter of disregard, rather than with the intention of injuring him.

Judge Wilson took a starting point of 27 months in prison, and then subtracted seven months to reflect Chandra's guilty pleas and his efforts to rehabilitate himself.

"You offended because of your drug abuse and a sense of entitlement," the judge observed.

"You made considerable progress overcoming an addiction to alcohol, but simply replaced it with an addiction to methamphetamine ... which is even more damaging."

The judge also issued Chandra with a first strike warning, issued to people convicted of serious offences.