My first Rally GB win
Co-driver Nicky Grist recalls tasting success 25 years ago alongside Juha Kankkunen
The 1993 RAC Rally was my first ever World Rally Championship win at home. It’s an event I’ll never forget and a result I’ll cherish forever.
I was, of course, competing with Juha Kankkunen at Toyota. I’d started to work with him in the middle of the season, drafted in after his regular co-driver,
Juha Piironen, suffered a brain haemorrhage in Argentina. After a brief recce we headed north to Tucuman for the start and first stage, which, remarkably, we were fastest on. Here I was leading a WRC event for the first time. From that point on we never lost the lead and won that first event together, and then won again in Australia some weeks later.
On the rally before the RAC, Juha had sewn up his fourth world title when we finished third in Spain. In all honesty, we didn’t even have to come to the RAC, but Juha told me:
“Boyo, we’re going and we’re going to win this one for you.”
Before the 1993 event, my best RAC finish was 25th overall and second in A5 while sharing Harry Hockly’s Vauxhall Nova five years earlier. And now here I was arriving at the start with a four-time world champion, running first on the road with number 1 on my door as part of the factory Toyota team. I do remember thinking: “Bloody hell…” but when I look back now, I took it all in my stride, even though it really was a dream come true.
We’d had a couple of weeks between Spain and the RAC.
In that time we’d done our pre-event test and, of course, the recce. During the test, the big focus was on tyres. There was a plethora of options – so many compounds, patterns, sizes, and then all of those could be cut into something new. It was incredible as we could choose the optimum tyre for each stage. Nowadays, the WRC drivers have to mix and match a very limited choice that cannot be cut in order to get the best compromise for a large group of stages! How things have changed.
The action started earlier than expected on the recce, when the bad weather arrived. Like today on this rally, we only had two passes through each stage. But the difference was we had 33 stages to recce. Only Donington was repeated (run three times in total), so the recce took a huge amount of planning.
We got to the Dyfnant stage in Wales and the organisers were all at the start – none of them could get through as the snow was so bad. I told them not to worry, as Juha said we’d go in and open the road up a bit for everyone in our four-wheeldrive Celica recce car – that’s how bad it was in places.
It was really cold on Sunday morning for the start out of Birmingham, but there wasn’t any snow as the Midlands was
fairly clear. Sutton Park, the first stage, was in good shape and we were quickest. Juha was always good on the Sunday spectator stages.
Down the M54 to Weston Park and that was OK as well. On the remainder of the Sunday loop we went through Oulton Park, Tatton Park and Chatsworth, which had some snow on the high ground, and into Clumber. We started to get more and more snow at the side of the road as we went further north.
The final stage of the day was at MIRA in Warwickshire, after which we were back to Birmingham with a slender 14-second lead. But we were all ready for an attack on Monday morning in Wales. That was where the rally would start in earnest.
Juha’s brother Timo was doing our gravel notes, so he’d been through the first stage in Dyfnant earlier and reported a lot of ice. Basically, it was all ice with a fair bit of snow in places.
Juha attacked in an attempt to catch everyone asleep. He was so, so impressive. The car control was exceptional. We started that stage at half-six in the morning in the pitch black and he was on it from the word go. We took 13s out of everybody and a whopping 47s out of Colin Mcrae.
This was during the time when all of Britain was rooting for Colin and his co-driver Derek Ringer to win. They’d led the event for the previous two years, but fallen foul of Grizedale both times. A day on from Dyfnant and we’d be back into the Lakes – and Juha and I were as interested as anybody to see how our Scottish Subaru rivals would fare.
Monday was a difficult day in Wales. There wasn’t so much snow, but the ice was everywhere and when daylight came it made it even more treacherous. In the trees, it was like an ice rink, but where the sun was – and it was a lovely sunny day – the grip wasn’t so bad. People talked of fearing a corner waiting for them in those conditions. I can honestly say I didn’t feel that with Juha. He was completely composed in the car. We clattered some logs in Dyfnant, but it was no bother.
By the end of day two, and after a series of really quick times, Colin was leading us by 21s as we left Wales and headed north on the M6 to the overnight halt in Lancaster. I knew this was going to be a real ding-dong battle.
Now for Grizedale… and Colin came through unscathed, still
in the lead. The reward for that was to head further north and into Kielder. Juha always called it ‘Killer Kielder’, but he did like the place and was not fazed by its reputation. This was where it got interesting. The ice was there, but now it was covered with fresh snow. And some more stages in the dark.
Unfortunately for Colin and Derek, however, their challenge ended in Kershope – the first Kielder stage – when a damaged radiator cooked the engine on their Impreza. Once again their rally was curtailed early on.
We’d been going at it pretty hard in a battle with the Scots and suddenly Juha and I were two and a half minutes ahead of everybody else. Did I dare think about taking my first-ever
RAC win? Not a chance. There was so much of Kielder still to come, and the night stages. And now there was the constant balance of what to do with tyres.
The studded bicycle-type narrow tyre we use in Sweden would have been the ideal choice, but we weren’t allowed those. We could take the narrow tyre with no spikes, but it didn’t have Michelin’s ATS mousse-insert system, which made the tyre pretty much puncture-proof. If you wanted the best grip, that was the tyre to cut through the snow. If you wanted to avoid punctures, you needed the wider gravel tyre, which had ATS.
We went with the narrow tyre and, once again, Juha was superb. It was something natural for the Scandinavians to drive the car in these conditions. A friend of mine was spectating at one stage and he told me after the event that they couldn’t even stand up on the road because it was so icy. When the course cars came through, they were so, so slow and just trying to stay on the road. Then they heard the whistles from the marshals and this Celica rocketed into view. He said it was unbelievable.
Juha used all of the road, regularly putting the car into a ditch to slow us down or finding traction out of corners on the frozen stones at the side. It was sensational from the outside, but so calm on the inside.
Unfortunately, we did fall foul of Kielder and a couple of punctures cost us two minutes. Suddenly Kenneth [Eriksson, Mitsubishi] was just 30s behind. Pundershaw was the last stage of day three, starting just before seven in the evening.
Juha got the hammer down in there and we took another big chunk out of everybody, but more importantly 49 seconds out of Eriksson, which gave us a reasonable buffer again.
With one day to go, things were looking good.
Hamsterley, first thing Wednesday, was full snow and halved in distance because of the conditions. We were quickest again, but Cropton, next up, showed we really weren’t out of the woods yet. We slid wide and clattered a gatepost or something on my side. The rear wing was well modified and it was actually quite a big impact. But the car was straight and, just to prove it, we went fastest in the next one, SS31, Gale Rigg. Langdale and
Dalby followed, and Juha just kept reeling the fastest times off.
The run back south to the finish was punctuated by a couple of spectator stages at Scunthorpe and one last run around Donington, where Juha drove sensibly to conserve the result. After that we were on the road to Birmingham for the finish around eight in the evening. Coming into Centenary Square was the most surreal feeling. There were these ceremonial trumpeters playing as we went over the ramp, and such a big cheer from the crowd. It was amazing, such a fantastic feeling.
It was still absolutely freezing when Juha and I got out of the car and stood on the bonnet. I’d popped the cork out of my champagne, sprayed it and enjoyed my first sip before he even got the top off his bottle! But that was pretty much all the celebrating for me. Juha had been competing at this level a long time and he went out to enjoy the moment with a big party. I wasn’t so interested in that; I was starting out and was just happy to have a couple of beers.
If there was one disappointment, it was the trophy. Those years earlier, finishing on the podium in A5 with Harry we’d got a lovely piece of Wedgewood. I was expecting something special for taking my first world championship win at home. Instead I got this thing with a wooden base, a gold Network Q logo and a small sliver of silver that read ‘Winner: Juha Kankkunen/nicky Grist’. In fairness, when Colin and
I won it four years later the trophy was much better.
And that was that. Birmingham might not have been one of the classic RAC venues like Chester or Harrogate, but it did mean I was only an hour and a quarter from home. Thursday morning, I was in the front door and back to normal life. In fact, I was probably on the golf course by mid-morning.
What a difference a day makes.