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It’s the evening before. We’ve just done the ceremonial start in Conwy, driven over the ramp, waved to the crowd. I’d even snuck into the hall and cheekily signed some of the WRC drivers’ postcards for them while they were busy next door ogling Peta Cavendish. On the 40-mile trawl back to the service park, the alternator packs up.

It’s the day after. I’m struggling with hairpins, and balls up a vital one in Sweet Lamb. It’s acute and uphill, so I don’t see the ditch on the outside. We dive in. There’s a solid impact. It takes eight or 10 spectators to get us out. We lose four minutes and the sump guard.

There’s a man waving an OK board (showing his condition post-accident). I know him; he drives car 259. He’s clearly in shock, but it’s an OK board, so we roar on past. We’re in the Aberhirnant stage, driving on a raised quarry causeway through scenery like an orc battlefeld. His crash won’t have been small. I’m concerned enough that I lose concentration, nearly going of a few corners later.

Words co-driver Jack said that weren’t in the pacenotes. “Easy now, EASY.” “Watch this one, it’ll be slippy here, slippy.” “Come back, come back for this one.” “That’s you.”

Unexpectedly, the sun is shining. The washers are clogged with mud, so the wipers are doing a cracking job of smearing the screen. We’re fat in ffth as we come out into bright, blinding sunlight.

Four of us are carrying a sheet of steel through the service area to the glass-and-steel architectural wonder that is Hyundai’s WRC encampment. It weighs 80kg and has defeated our angle grinder. I wipe my muddy boots on the thick carpet, rest my spattered elbows on the desk next to the fower vase and say, “I hope you might be able to help us…”

I’m standing on the fnishing ramp on Sunday afternoon. Someone presents me with a cup. It’s surprisingly heavy. The engraving reads ‘2014 Wales Rally GB National Class Winner’.

We got our fairytale ending, and it made me so happy my eyes welled with tears. But our passage through the three days of Wales Rally GB was as rough and bumpy as the stages themselves – but what we went through wasn’t unusual, it’s just rallying. And, God, I loved it.

So let’s go back to the beginning: Thursday 13 November. Scrutineering is at a technical college. The car looks mighty, but we’re nervous because our ridiculous WRC rear wing might fall foul of regulations, and we already know we’re very noisy. VERY. But we breeze it – the wing is legit (although