WRC: Evans storms to Rally GB victory
The fans flocked to Wales and local hero Elfyn Evans dominated, while Sebastien Ogier secured his fifth World Rally crown
Not since Sunday September 16, 2012 had a driver other than Sebastien Ogier led Wales Rally GB. Not since Friday November 22, 2001 had a British driver led their home round of the World Rally Championship. Myherin, mid-morning last Friday and Elfyn Evans changed those records. But what about the big one? What about the fact that a local hadn’t sprayed the Sunday afternoon champagne on this rally since Richard Burns did 17 years ago? Evans was more than equal to correcting that wrong, too.
M-sport enjoyed its own golden hour last Sunday. When Ott Tanak crossed the finish line on SS21 at 1250 in his Ford Fiesta, the Cumbrians ruled the world for the first time in 10 years. Thirteen minutes later, team-mate Ogier followed him and became only the second man in history to lift five world titles.
Ten minutes after that, Evans rounded off the most incredible Sunday lunchtime by becoming the fourth
Briton to win his home round of the World Rally Championship.
The fairytale was complete. The dream delivered. The delight etched into Evans’ face was hard to reconcile with the fella who was watching on the sidelines on this rally just 12 months ago.
A year ago, Elfyn didn’t know if he had a job. There was the chance of something. Or nothing. Now? Rally GB hero. Let’s have a look at the four days that changed everything for Evans and Dan Barritt.
Wales was full last weekend. There was no room at the inns and even less in the stages. Car parks? Forget it. Only the hardcore, the car sleepers, were guaranteed a place. The verges lining the road sections were the only option. But they were fraught with risk – the risk, that is, of losing your car for the rest of the day.
Alun Davies didn’t care. His mother’s SEAT Ibiza would be sacrificed if necessary. This hardest of hardcore rally fans from Newcastle Emlyn in southwest Wales was following the event four-up, complete with sleeping bags, a camping stove and a boot-load of
Tesco value sausages.
His dedication was matched only by his determination not to be denied his chance to see one man. “Elfyn,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. He’s the boy, isn’t he?”
His voice trailed away, almost daring me to contradict him. Daring me to point to the fight for this year’s World Rally Championship or the most spectacular
and fastest rally cars in the sport’s history. I didn’t dare.
“Actually, I came last year as well,” he added, referencing the fact that he doesn’t just come to follow Evans. “I’ve not missed one of these for years. I’m from down south [Wales], so don’t be telling everybody this, but this rally’s much better up here in the north.”
He wasn’t keen to be deterred, partly because he didn’t want to miss Elfyn and partly because he didn’t want to be around if the police arrived.
“They can have the car,” he said, pointing at the muddied, tired-looking SEAT parked neatly between one sign declaring the car parks full and another one outlining this as a ‘Tow-away zone’.
“I’m off. I’m not going to miss this.
I’ll deal with my ma and tell her what’s happened to her car later.”
M-sport cap pulled low, he was away, across the A470 and running towards the village of Aberangell. Heading for the hills, up through the woods and, miles later, a super-quick entry followed by a big drift through the following downhill righthander that was junction three of Dyfi.
Not long after he’d gone, the police did arrive. What, I asked, would they do about the cars? “Not much we can do, is there?” said the policeman with a smile. “There aren’t enough tow trucks in
Wales to deal with this!”
Davies’ story was typical of thousands last week. Tens of thousands. Whether it was the cars, the championship or the boy from just up the road in Dinas Mawddwy, they came back in their droves.
And Evans delivered for them. His wasn’t always the most spectacular World Rally Car out there, but it was the fastest. And the one accompanied by the loudest cheers.
Elfyn’s Corner on that first stage in Myherin was a case in point. The corner itself was just an average second-gear right-hander. Nothing special. The
“Bloody hell! I’ve never had support like this and never seen so many people on the stages” Elfyn Evans
approach out of the windfarm half a mile back up the road was a gazillion times more spectacular (Kris Meeke and Esapekka Lappi on the lock stops and the limiter in fifth is a sight that will remain with me for a very long time), but this one wasn’t all about the spectacle. It was about the sight and the sound.
And when their boy came into view, it was like Welsh rugby star Shane Williams picking the ball up in his own 22, dropping the shoulder and dancing his way down the wing to another score. Who would have thought that roofclosed Millennium Stadium roar could be recreated on the side of a sunny
Welsh hillside, well north of Cardiff?
“What was it like?” Elfyn asked later that day. I explained. He grinned. Had he seen anything? Like the 30-foot banner revealing that this particular corner of Myherin would be forever Elfyn?
“No,” he said. “I said I didn’t know where it was before the stage, but I did really. It’s so quick coming down into there, you’re so focused on what you’re doing, getting the car slowed into that section… there’s not a second to think about anything else.”
But, clearly, Evans had put a huge amount of thought into this rally.
“I knew we had an advantage with the tyre, but at the same time I knew I had to be careful how I drove,” he said. “Two years ago, I came here, went like hell and it just didn’t work.
“This time I knew I had to do something different. I knew I had to drive neater, keep the car straighter, cleaner and not push. The minute you start to bounce the thing off the banks then you’re losing time. You just can’t over-drive this rally.”
Evans’ co-driver Dan Barritt remembers two years ago as well. “We would be coming to the end of stages and we’d pushed like hell,” he said, “and then we saw the times and it just wasn’t happening. You have to be patient with this event and he’s got that.”
And to go with that patience, Elfyn needed DMACK’S specially cooked DMG+22 tyres. The Cumbrian firm played its joker to bring a new, softer, more open-treaded tyre for the last three rounds of the championship.
When it melted in Spain earlier in October, there were sniggers from some of those less well informed in the service park. But those in the know knew full well what a potent force Elfyn’s new boots would be on a wet Welsh stage.
And so it transpired. The softer rubber offered more compound grip, while the blocks – the ones that had wobbled and wilted on Terra Alta – shifted the mud and clawed at forest beneath.
By the end of the Myherin, the first stage proper, Evans was in charge and in control. And only once through the three days did that waiver.
At the end of Myherin second time through, he’d done the radio and the
TV, talked the positive talk, but a
flicker of doubt came across his face. “It’s drying like hell…” he said.
Hafren was Friday’s sole remaining big test for his DMACKS. And, fortunately, Friday’s longest road remained largely hidden beneath the trees, shaded from the sun, shielded from the wind. It was still damp enough.
Just before six on Saturday morning and legendary tyre engineer Fiorenzo Brivio was deep in conversation with Evans. Brivio masterminded countless wins and titles for Pirelli before switching to DMACK two years ago.
This moment, that morning was right up there with the best of them.
Could his covers cope with almost 70 miles of flat-out motoring? That was the question. There was cloud cover and talk of drizzle. But the temperatures were a little higher than expected and… 70 miles.
Which do you choose? A hard or soft option? The conservative choice would be to mix them up, stick two hards at the front or even cross them diagonally. But that would immediately compromise feel for the car.
Prior to the start of this rally, one man had won Britain’s round of the world championship more than any other, Petter Solberg. Autosport asked the five-time winner what he needed most from the car in Wales.
“Confidence,” was the answer. “Yes, you need speed and the dampers working well; you need the chassis soft for the traction, but still firm enough to give you the turn-in at high speed; you need all of that. But what you need most from the car is confidence. If you don’t trust your car in Wales, you are nowhere. When I won, I put everything into that car. I knew, when I wanted it to turn at 160km/h in the mud, it would turn.”
Different grip levels from different corners of the car would undermine that immediately. Evans had complete confidence in the car and complete confidence in Brivio.
They went soft. It worked a treat.
“It was a brave choice,” said the likeable Italian. “It was courageous because there was more temperature. When I came through these stages on Monday they were like a race track, but then the rain came on Tuesday. That made us happy.”
Keith Phillips was pretty chuffed,
“Elfyn is driving without putting a foot out of place. To do that in the fog was simply incredible” Sebastien Ogier
too. Howard Davies is always a welcome sight; Gwyndaf Evans’ former co-driver is now a presenter of Welsh television’s Ralio show. And he remains as entertaining as ever.
Deep in the depths of Dyfi, big Howie was entertaining Mr Phillips. “You should meet this man,” Howard tells me. So I do.
Phillips was Elfyn’s tutor at Coleg Meirion-dwyfor. He set about telling some stories of a 16-year-old Evans.
“He arrived with a string of A grades at GCSE,” he said. “He was clearly a very bright young man and came to study advanced engineering. I remember some of his design and technology work was very, very good. He was a clever student…” Phillips’ voice quietened as he looked back towards the stage behind him.
“…but his motivation was elsewhere.”
What was doubly refreshing last weekend was the reverence for Evans’ efforts. Yes, the DMACKS were mentioned, but Ogier challenged anybody to question the commitment his team-mate was putting in.
“He is still driving the car,” said the Frenchman, “and he is driving it without putting a foot out of place. And this is Wales, and to do that in the fog last night was simply incredible. It was horrible in there.”
And Ogier would know. He’d gone off the road in a pea-souper of a run through Aberhirnant on Saturday night, clattering the left-front of his Fiesta and causing a flurry of excitement at M-sport. Coming out of the stage high above Bala lake, there’s zero phone coverage at the best of times, but with the fog down in the pitch black, there was real panic back at base.
Ogier got out his torch, got on his hands and knees in the rain and mud, stripped the brake disc off that corner, bled the brakes, got back in the car and set a time just 3.3s down on Evans through Dyfnant two. With only three functioning anchors on his Red Bullliveried motor.
Those two Saturday night stages were another fascinating facet of this year’s route. The fog shook up the leaderboard, costing Tanak and Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville most dearly. Neuville talked with some confidence about him and
Ott obviously having the worst of the conditions… But there were some who gambled and gained. Haydon Paddon, for example, had an event to forget, but a run through the murk to remember as he swallowed a brave pill and tuned in to co-driver Seb Marshall like never before.
After the event, Ogier’s co-driver Julien Ingrassia talked about the feeling inside the car in the dark and the fog. “When you have a stage like this,” he said, “you realise that you live something unique.”
The view from outside the car was almost as special: tracing the lights as they arced through the night sky, hearing the anti-lag bouncing off the trees as you waited, watched, senses heightened. Saturday night was alright for rally fans.
And Sunday morning was easy for Elfyn. “I wasn’t sure what was going on with myself during the day,” he said. “I’d talked myself into believing this was just another rally, that I was actually believing it and I wasn’t actually that bothered!
But the feeling definitely changed once we crossed that line.”
Out of the car, there was the obligatory step onto the roof of the car, before a classic interview with a proud-as-punch father Gwyndaf alongside.
“Bloody hell,” said Elfyn. “There were a lot of people around there. I don’t think Brenig’s ever seen so many folk! And I’ve got to say, what a lift they’ve given Dan and me this week. I’ve never had support like this and I’ve really never seen as many people on the stages. It’s been unreal, but it’s really helped.”
But the loudest cheer was the one that boomed out of M-sport’s corner of the service park when Britain’s 17-year wait for another win was done.
With so much focus on M-sport’s success, it was easy to forget Neuville’s pacey, if turbulent, run to second or Andreas Mikkelsen’s impressive fourth on his first time out on a full gravel rally in the Hyundai i20.
Such was the ferocity of the battle, fifth-placed Jari-matti Latvala was only five seconds off a podium spot in his Toyota. But had he switched places with the man who stood on the bottom step, the story wouldn’t have been the same. Ogier was a thoroughly deserving and unusually emotional world champion by the close of play.
But this week’s story was two steps up. With the dust settling, Autosport looked to move the story on, thinking next year, championship? What next, Elf?
“Home,” he said quietly. “Bit of a celebration tonight, but then back down those roads to Dolgellau tomorrow.
There won’t be quite so many folk waving this time, though…”
Understated, always. Underrated?
Not any more.