DAVID EVANS
“Meeke stars in WRC launch”
One question, five times in two minutes. “Where’s Kris?” I still didn’t know. Toyota Gazoo Racing’s interview was already late. Autosport International was waiting, interviewer Colin Clark was waiting. The watching world – via autosport.com – was waiting. Too late, we had to go. Team principal Tommi Makinen led out three co-drivers and, er, two drivers.
Cleaned up and in precis, the last message from an increasingly pale colleague contained two words: “Find him!”
Meeke had been delayed in another interview and was spotted valiantly trying to make the last few metres to the stage while stopping for another selfie and signing another autograph. Seeing a gap in the crowd, he pulled his cap down and bolted for the barrier – which he cleared comfortably before climbing up on stage. Almost unnoticed. And a bit like the Milk Tray man in Toyota overalls. Saturday was like that. Mad. But mad in the very best and most fever-filled sense of the word.
Working for MN and Autosport, I had a bit of a hand in the launch of this year’s World Rally Championship. It was, for example, my idea to gather everybody in the
Autosport hotel reception before leading a five-minute walk through the slightly less glam parts of our second city’s exhibition halls, to place the good and the great on the Centre Stage before 0900hrs.
Ott Tanak and I led the way, but looking back up the road was a slightly sobering experience as every driver, co-driver and team principal followed in the full expectation that I had remembered the way. Fortunately, I had.
The first part of the launch was a parade from Centre Stage through two halls and into the WRC area, where all four factory cars waited with their 2019 liveries hidden beneath a sheet. The atmosphere when we walked into a crowd already being measured in the thousands was quite extraordinary.
Sebastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia and their colleagues were treated like the genuine heroes they are. But the most special moment came when Meeke was called up to help pull the cover from his new company car. The cheer that reverberated through Hall 3 was precisely the same noise that accompanied Colin Mcrae’s unveiling of pretty much anything.
Saturday was a truly memorable start to what’s got the potential to be a very special season. As we all know, these things are a team effort and the team behind Autosport International is nothing short of brilliant. But the team leader’s even better. Unfortunately for us, Kate Woodley’s leaving for pastures new this month. She leaves some brilliant, warm and wonderful memories alongside a pair of very big shoes for somebody to fill.
If Kate organises the show, it will forever turn around one man: Henry Hope-frost. This was the first year without H and it was always going to be a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions. Seeing his wife Charlotte, son Oscar and father Tim arrive for a tribute and inaugural presentation of the Fever Award was a moment of humility which put everything in order. What a collection of genuinely exceptional human beings.
It wasn’t the same. How could it be? Not without a mention of ‘mud’ or one of Dr Fever’s imaginary handbrake turns in the middle of the stage.