MALCOLM WILSON
We look at the amazing rallying career of M-Sport’s founder.
The very first time I saw Malcolm Wilson in rallying action was in the late 1970s, on a slippery stage in Kielder; he was driving an ex-works Ford Escort RS1800 to its limits, on his way to winning the Castrol-Autosport Rally Championship.
A year later, he was invited to drive Datsuns prepared by Andy Dawson’s DAD organisation – in what would be his first works drive. It was a good offer, to be backed by a great deal of Japanese money and resources. But he turned it down quickly, decisively, and never seemed to regret it.
Even then, and in all the years that followed, Malcolm had clear ambitions; not only to break through into the topmost elite of worldclass rally drivers, but to become a superstar, and to run his own successful business.
More than 40 years later, he has certainly achieved all that – and then some – as a visit to sample his M-Sport empire in Cumbria confirms. Not only has his team developed many world championship-winning Fords, it has backed the drivers who came to join in the effort.
The driver who started by preparing his own scruffy-but-effective Escorts in the yard of the family engineering business went on to develop a multi-million-pound operation at Dovenby Hall, near Cockermouth.
Here, Focus and Fiesta machines became rally winners, Bentleys were prepared to tackle the GT3 category of sports car racing, and a new test track was built alongside M-Sport’s state-of-the-art technical premises.
“M-Sport built no fewer than 97 Focus World Rally Cars. Not only did we manage to win 44 rallies outright on the world stage, but we were also able to win the Manufacturers’ Championship twice”
Not that it has been quick, or easy. Indeed, the best way to summarise it all is to use Malcolm’s own story:
“M-Sport was granted the contract to run Ford’s FIA World Rally Championship campaign in 1997, and the Focus was our first original product. From then on, I think it’s fair to say that the Focus was involved in almost every hour of my life. The championship may have progressed since then, but the Focus will always have a fond place in my memory.
“Between 1998 and 2010, M-Sport built no fewer than 97 Focus World Rally Cars. Not only did we manage to win 44 rallies outright on the world stage, but we were also able to win the Manufacturers’ Championship twice – in 2006 and 2007.
“As the Focus gained success and notoriety, so did M-Sport. We moved from small premises at my family home in Cumbria to a purpose-built HQ a few miles away, and our workforce grew from a team of 18 to more than 200. Now we design, engineer and develop almost everything in-house, and that would never have been possible without the Focus era.”
Along the way, M-Sport became a massive builder of Fiesta competition hatchbacks for lesser formula motorsport, took on development projects for clients who
still prefer to remain anonymous, and to design and build its own unique engines.
All of which is a far cry from the way that Malcolm got started; in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he had always found it difficult to burst into the Ford works team.
Even so, buying an ex-works/ex-Billy Coleman Escort RS1800 (HHJ 701N) in 1976 must have helped. Serious but unsuccessful outings in the Total RS1800 in 1980 must have been a factor too. Add to those a high-profile year with the flamboyant Sutton/Rothmans team of Escorts, which followed in 1981. Yet in his first contracted links with Ford at Boreham, Malcolm had to settle for driving a rather fragile Group A front-wheel-drive Escort RS1600i in 1983.
In spite of being closely involved in the testing and development of the brand-new Group B RS200 throughout 1984 and 1985 (he went on to give that car its first-time-out victory in the 1985 Lindisfarne rally), he was still denied a place in the full factory team. Mark Lovell was the rising star at the time, and there never seemed to be the time, or the budget, for Ford Motorsport to support both British drivers.
Malcolm, though, had big ideas – though at that time he never trumpeted them in the press. Although determined to stay close to his much-loved Cumbrian home, he not only wanted to expand his parts-supply business, but to develop a car preparation strategy and – when the time came – to run other teams’ programmes. This was the period when not only did he buy an ex-David Sutton Audi Quattro to contest British events (winning on several occasions), but for 1986 he signed up with Austin-Rover to drive Metro 6R4s in world championship events.
That turned out to be a traumatic, and unsuccessful season, which meant that for the next three years he had to be satisfied by driving UK-factory sponsored Peugeot 205GTIs and Vauxhall Astras.
A breakthrough came in 1990, when Malcolm spent time testing and developing Boreham’s new Q8-sponsored Sapphire Cosworth 4x4s, followed, in 1991, by a place in the Sapphire world championship team (where the cars were afflicted with all manner of mechanical breakdowns).
For Malcolm, though, the real
“The breakthrough came immediately, when he began to drive the sensational new Escort RS Cosworth. He won the 1994 British Rally Championship in Michelin-sponsored cars”
breakthrough came immediately afterwards, when he began to drive the sensational new Escort RS Cosworth. He won the 1994 British Rally Championship in Michelinsponsored cars, while his business (now known as M-Sport), built successful European Championship Escorts for Martini-sponsored cars to be based in Italy.
With his team’s professionalism and expertise no longer in doubt, M-Sport then won the contract to take over the works WRC programme for 1997 and 1998, using Escort World Rally Cars. But the ultimate accolade came when he was contracted by Ford not only to run, but to design and develop, an entirely new-generation rally car – the Focus World Rally Car.
It was Malcolm’s vision (and it should never be described as less important than this) that Guenther Steiner should be hired to manage that programme (Guenther is now team principal of the Haas F1 racing team), that ex-F1 and Xtrac engineer Ray Stokoe should look after the layout of the new machine, and that all this should originally be based at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire.
From then, Malcolm finally decided he could no longer find time to compete at top level, but endeavoured to become a big-time businessman instead. He set about finding suitable premises in Cumbria for his everexpanding team (Dovenby Hall, an ex-mental hospital near Cockermouth), he attracted substantial sponsorship from Martini, and he persuaded first of all Colin McRae, then Carlos Sainz, to become his star drivers.
The story of the 2000s, of course, is now well-known, for Malcolm and M-Sport completed an ever-expanding programme of development and world championship success, not only by bringing the World Rally Constructors’ Championship back to the UK twice (and running second on seven other seasons), but by supporting superstars like McRae, Sainz, Marcus Grönholm and Mikko Hirvonen to win many individual events.
In this period, M-Sport built about 100 new Focus WRC cars – and planned to do even more in the next decade.
What has happened since then is so recent that it must be well-known to Fast
Ford readers, for Malcolm has not only continued to expand his centre of operations in Cumbria, has overseen a major expansion of Fiesta rally car assembly in Poland, and has provided the backing for Fiestas driven by Sébastien Ogier to win two world championships, in 2017 and 2018.
M-Sport not only continues to fight hard for World Rally Championship honours, but the business continues to grow; there is already more than rallying and racing in progress, and further technology-based programmes too.
Not bad, surely, for a man who started out by preparing his own rally cars at home 50 years ago?