ROSS WHITTOCK
The 2019 European Rally Championship-winning co-driver
It’s been eight months since Chris Ingram and I won the European Rally Championship, which means it’s been eight months since I last did a rally. It’s the longest period of time I’ve had out of competition since I started rallying. But, of course, there are worse events to have as your most recent. Hungary was a new rally, so the weekend was actually quite normal for me despite what was at stake, as I had lots of preparation to do beforehand. The goal was to keep an eye on what was going on with our championship rival, Alexey Lukyanuk, and trying not to over drive. When we got a front-right puncture with 12km still to go and lost two minutes – and third place – to Callum Devine who had a flier of a time, we automatically thought we’d lost the championship.
But as soon as the next car came in, which was Sean Johnston, we were like ‘hang on a minute, something’s up here we could have a chance’ because Lukyanuk was meant to be next. It was a truly special moment which we’ll never forget, and nobody can take that title from us.
However it’s been a bit of an anti-climax since. I was lucky enough at the start of the year to get a job with Toksport – the team that runs our Skoda Fabia R5 – doing all the coordination and the team manager role on events for their customers when I’m not competing. So I’ve been to Rally Sweden and Rally Mexico with them this year; at the rallies but not doing the rallies.
We were quite close to getting sponsors onboard for our own season before coronavirus, but then of course nothing’s happening now so I think Chris is back to square one. I’m quite positive we’ll be out once or twice this year but it’s just when and what we do.
I hope I’ll be going to Latvia with Toksport in August because I believe Eyvind Brynildsen is still hoping to do all of the ERC apart from Rome. So I think we start with Latvia then I’m pretty sure that Emilio Fernandez wants to do Estonia again, so we’ll probably be going to Estonia in the WRC too.
This job with Toksport has been really good for me but at the moment, because I’m a selfemployed agent with them and there’s no rallies, I don’t get paid. So two weeks after I came back from Mexico, I applied for a job at
Morrisons to try and get ahead in the queue with potentially a lot of others looking at jobs like that to tide them over. I’m involved in the online shopping side of things, picking all the shopping out. It was put to me that not a lot of European champions would be working in a supermarket, but I have to in order to afford my rent.
I have tried some stuff to stay sharp for rallying during these last few months though. I’ve had WRC All Live up on my TV and tried to read mine and Chris’s pacenotes with the WRC cars. It’s quite good to get you back into reading pacenotes but at the end of the day you’re just sat on a sofa, there’s no feel to it so it doesn’t replicate at all what it’s like in a car. But it keeps my mind sharp and avoids the first time I see a set of pacenotes being when I’m back in a rally car.
It does cross my mind a few times whether this is going to work out for me, but you have to keep the belief. Even though the ultimate goal is to get to the WRC with Chris, you never know what will happen and it’s certainly not easy trying to get there. And as a co-driver, what you don’t want to be known as is simply Chris Ingram’s co-driver. You want to be known as yourself.
Knowing the right people is key in this game. It’s not always about the level of skill. The boys at the top of the game, they deserve to be there because they are the best but there are people making a proper living out of co-driving that I don’t think are necessarily as good as me, but because they know the right people they’re in that situation.
It’s my mission to just keep reminding everyone that I’m here and am hungrier than ever to get going and do the perfect job.