Navigator Andy loves
Serious accident no deterrent as Hayes c
THE FAST-PACED world of rallying is not for the faint-hearted, but for Wexford man Andy Hayes, it has become a way of life.
Hayes was in the navigator’s seat beside Josh Moffett in a Ford Fiesta as the pair stormed to success in the Triton Showers National Rally Championship last year.
The Clonard native may have reached the upper echelons of the amateur game after over a decade serving as a co-driver, but he got on the long and winding road of motor sport by chance, when an old schoolmate, Eoin Neville, got in touch.
‘Eoin started doing a bit of rally driving and he just rang me out of the blue one day back in 2008 and asked me would I be interested in navigating for him.
‘I said I’d give it a shot, it was as simple as that. We said we’d do it for a bit of craic. He’s still driving to this day and I’m still navigating,’ he said.
Hayes did dabble in a touch of driving himself for a while, but an accident, alongside his brother John, soon put paid to any chance of him continuing on that route.
‘In 2012 I decided I’d take a chance behind the wheel myself, so I bought a little Citreon Saxo. I got the brother to navigate for me. We did a few rallies and upgraded the car and got a Honda Civic.
‘We were doing the Wexford Rally in 2014 and we were up in Ballindaggin. I must have had a bit of a brain freeze, I came around a corner that I should have been braking down to first gear for a chicane but I came around in sixth gear, saw the chicane at the last second, tried to avoid it and I hit a concrete pier.
‘I put myself into a wheelchair for six weeks and put my brother into Wexford General for a week. That was more or less the end of the driving,’ he laughed.
‘It took four months to get back in the seat, that was in September and I wasn’t back walking until January. As soon as I got off the crutches I was back navigating, actually I was still on crutches when I went back if the truth be told.
‘I never went driving much again, I did a couple of rallies since but that pretty much finished it,’ he said.
For those of a less ballsy nature, that incident could have been the catalyst to limp away from the sport, but rallying aficionados are made of stern stuff and getting back on the horse, so to speak, wasn’t a problem.
‘It frightened me enough not to get in a car with me driving, but if there’s a decent driver there’s no issue there. I got nervous with my own driving.
‘Funnily enough he [John] said at the time he’d never get in a rally car again, but about three years ago he decided that he’d go driving. He ended up buying a car and I started navigating for him. He’s driving away still and I navigate for him the odd time,’ he said.
Hayes has experienced FIA World Rally Championship driver Craig Breen to thank for opening doors for him, and teaming up with the Waterford man six years ago really helped him to get on the right course.
‘In 2014, around the time of the accident, I had just started doing a bit of work with Craig Breen. I had got in touch with him a few months before that, and I started helping him out with European Championship and World Championship events.
‘I wasn’t navigating for him, what I was doing was like a safety car type thing. Craig would be competing in the rally and we’d go about two hours ahead of him and check the road conditions for him.
‘That had started just around the time of the accident so, when I got back on my feet again, the first thing I went to do was navigate for Craig for a rally. I did that for three or four years, on and off, and Craig put me in touch with a good few different guys.
‘I did a good few rounds of the World and European Championships with Craig, helping out and doing that safety crew type thing, and at home I started navigating for Josh Moffett,’ he said.
His partnership with Moffett began two years ago and it has proved to be an auspicious meeting of minds as they won the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship in 2018, and last year topped the charts in the Irish National Rally Championship.
‘Craig kind of sorted it all out for me. He had the contacts so he put me in touch with Josh. Last year we won six of the seven rounds and came second in the other one, which was actually his home rally in Monaghan, the one he really wanted to win all year,’ he said.
Hayes is regularly on co-driving duty on both sides of the Atlantic as Breen also paved the way for him to use his navigating skills in America.
‘Craig put me in touch with a couple of guys over in the U.S. and it all kicked off really from there. I did the second half of the U.S. Rally Championship with an Irish guy, Barry McKenna. No wins over there, I think we got a couple of seconds and a third so that was a bit of craic too,’ he said.
There has to be a huge element of trust between a rally driver and their navigator, as if either makes a mistake it could prove extremely costly, and Hayes agrees that they need to be on the same wavelength.
‘I proved that back in 2014 when I put the brother in hospital. There is obviously a massive level of trust. I’ve been lucky enough in the last few years.
‘I did a few rallies with Craig Breen and he’s a professional, so you’d trust him to the end of the earth. It’s what he does all day, every day.
‘But even the likes of Josh Moffett or Barry over in the U.S., they’re amateurs technically but in terms of talent they’re not far away from the top level.
‘You trust that they’re not going to do anything stupid. You put that out of your mind and you just ge
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