ROB WILSON
The young gun of BTRDA competition looks back on FIA Rally Star and ahead to four-wheel drive in 2022
My dad always loved cars and he competed back in the early 1990s in fairly normal machinery. When I grew up there were always rally cars in the garage and when I got to the age of 14 I bought my first Nissan Micra to use in the Junior 1000 rally championship. My first year was 2017, and I won the pre-’03 class, which was a brilliant experience. You’re thrown into the deep end because, obviously, I’d never done any driving beforehand at 14 years old and then you get put straight into a rally car but it was really good and we were setting top-five times on the overall Junior 1000 in a £2000 Nissan Micra.
From there we went to the Citroen C1/ Peugeot 107, and then in 2019 won the overall Formula 1000 championship. Elliott Payne and Ioan Lloyd and Eddie Lewis all came up through Junior 1000 together with me, Elliott was my closest challenger for the overall title, so we spent three years battling together.
It was great to have some very talented guys to grow up with in that respect. It’s never just been about the driving for me, you’ve got to enjoy it, and the people in that championship were really good. While it was super-competitive, and rallies were lost by one or two seconds, the camaraderie was so good between us and those three years in juniors will probably be some of the best I’ll have.
When Covid hit, I’d really only done one senior rally and hadn’t established myself. It was a big blow and we were also having a few issues with building a budget, so in some ways the break gave us time to prepare. I sorted the car out properly and then we did the M-Sport Stages just to get back in the car after six months in 2020, and won the class in our Fiesta R2. So that was a brilliant confidence boost. It was almost a year after that before I got back in a car, though, and I only did four or five rallies in total through those two years.
A lot of keeping the momentum going has stemmed from the Motorsport UK Academy. It’s such a brilliant, well-rounded programme now that they have the facilities at Bicester and I was part of that from 2019 to last year.
The Academy taught me so much about the mentality behind the sport, and it’s from there that I knew the people who were selecting the UK candidates for the FIA Rally Star. I did the digital challenge as well as being selected as a wildcard for the national qualifying round.
On the day of the UK selections, I won the morning autosolo, the fitness testing and the afternoon autosolo, so obviously that put me in a pretty strong position to be among the UK drivers selected to go to Germany for the regional final. I couldn’t have done much more!
Winning the UK final was amazing. I didn’t expect it because I arrived and saw George Lepley and Tom Llewellin there and they’re drivers I have looked up to and have sort of followed in their footsteps, so it was daunting to go up against them. Then there was a hiatus until December, but Motorsport UK put me in touch with Porsche Performance and we did fitness stuff and that got me in a good state for the finals.
There was a great spirit between George, Katie Milner and myself. Although we were competing against each other as much as the others, we would point out where we’d gone wrong and look out for each other.
That side of the event was great, but then having the chance to talk to big names in the sport was incredible.
Malcolm Wilson and Robert Reid described me as ‘aggressive but precise,’ so take that as you want! I think coming from a front-wheeldrive Fiesta R2 showed through there – you have to throw it into the corners to get the front diff working otherwise the car doesn’t do what you want it to. I’m not someone who is scared of the car that I’m in.
Also, I had a session in the Fiesta with Matt Edwards and he really taught me how to be aggressive with it in the right way and to really find that precision you need to go fast on a stage without being on the ragged edge.
This year’s programme is really exciting. It really started to form back in November. I considered the Junior British Rally Championship but I took the plunge to spend the money on the fastest car I could find to compete in the BTRDA.
I run the car myself, I find the sponsors for it, and an R5 was beyond my means so a highspec Mitsubishi Lancer Evo was the next target. It was a bit of a task but we got there, and I’ve now converted it over to gravel-spec which was a big, enjoyable job.
Ravenol UK has supported me since my second season and I laid out my plan and they were happy to stay with me, even though it’s more money. I’m doing some extra work for them, some social media and helping their boss out, and I couldn’t have done it without them.
So this year is going to be focusing on the Welsh National championship and the BTRDA and at the media day we were immediately on the pace of the R5s. We’ve got to be realistic, there are people who have driven in Class
B13 for 10 years, but I am really excited to get going. The car is so fast: after the little Fiesta R2 you find yourself doing 120mph and saying to yourself ‘this is quite a big car to stop!’ but it definitely feels like the right step to take. We start out on the Rallynuts Stages next month, before which I’d like to get another test in and also find a new co-driver. That’s been going well since my previous co-driver moved to Germany, I put a post on social media and was overwhelmed by the number of people interested. My aim is to find a relationship that works in the car and then build on last year’s successes towards even more in future.
“I decided to go out and get the fastest car that I could for the 2022 season”