I’m no rally co-driver

Elena, however, didn’t leave it at that. Instead, he went on the offensive, targeting the team that engineered his exit. ‘Your philosophy is simple: we are Prodrive, we are the greatest team in the world, we’ve won everything. But the last thing you won in the WRC was in 2003 with Solberg. Since then, Loeb and Elena arrived on the scene.’

He went on, adding, ‘So, the war is not over. The English won the 100-year war with France, but hey, I am Monégasque, so I am sorry, but the war is not over.’ Fighting talk indeed. I actually feel for Elena, but I do love it when motorsport stars have a very public strop. ‘Flounce’ is the word I used in that Instagram piece. I just wanted to call out Elena’s folly in this instance, but the truth is my respect for him is boundless, just as it is for any successful rally co-driver.

I’ve come to know several over the years, including Robert Reid, co-driver to Richard Burns, and Nicky Grist, navigator to Colin McRae and Juha Kankkunen, plus a handful of the younger guys. They all seem to have the same qualities. They’re able to sit in a car over which they have no direct control at frightening three-figure speeds, hurtling through forests or along vertiginous hillsides, all while calling out fearsomely complex pacenotes without error, for one thing. But quite apart from all that, they tend to be icy cool under pressure, organised to a military standard, disciplined, well-prepared, intelligent, broad-minded and insightful. They’re all the things many drivers are not.

Could I have been a rally co-driver? For a while I was really rather confident I could have been, right up until the point I actually tried it. One stage was all it took for me to realise how hopelessly idiotic I’d been. Sadly for me, there was another stage after that, followed by several more. After trying co-driving once, I swore to myself I would never do it again. My respect for those who do it even at an amateur level went through the roof.

It was the Wyedean Rally, my local forest event. Eight years ago now. Chris Harris had bought a ratty E30 BMW 325i for £4000 and he’d invited me to sit alongside him for a rally. I felt nervous from the very moment he suggested it, but I agreed anyway. What followed was unquestionably the most shambolic performance on a rally from any crew before or since. We were not only hopeless, but actively dangerous.

It all started in scrutineering. When the official asked us to demonstrate that our car’s brake lights worked and they didn’t, Harris and I both visibly deflated and assumed our weekend was over. Thankfully, a mate of ours – who just so happened to be in the scrutineering bay alongside us and also the best mechanic under pressure I’ve ever known – leapt into action. While Chris and I got ready to pack up and leave, he simply unscrewed a bulb from elsewhere, twisted it into the brake light unit and in doing so, saved the day.

Although I rather wish he hadn’t. Like all the other crews, we were using pacenotes supplied by the organisers. They were detailed without being bewildering. I understood what they meant and could relay them to Chris over the 325i’s intercom. But our struggles began even before we got to the first stage. The organisers also supplied road books with tulip diagrams to guide us along the public roads between stages. With a bit of an effort and one or two missed turns, we got to the start of stage one.

Thinking about it now, we were the blind leading the blind. As you’ll know Chris is a hugely skilful driver, but at this point he hadn’t done a great deal of rallying. The rallying he had done had been overseen by an experienced co-driver, meaning he hadn’t had to pay any attention whatsoever to the administrative or timekeeping aspect of the sport. As a total rookie, I simply didn’t know which piece of paper I was supposed to be handing to whom, when, or with what scribblings on it. The stage start marshal had to tell me because Chris didn’t know either.

I remember being sat in the forest in a short line of cars, which snaked out in front of us around a bend to the right. We crept forward as the line of cars did so, me feeling increasingly nervous. I had no clue what the signs by the side of the road actually meant.

‘Oh shit,’ said Chris. ‘That’s the start line.’ What had I been expecting – a grandstand and spectators? We both hurriedly strapped on our helmets and tightened our belts, setting off into the woods a minute later. In fairness to us both, that first stage went reasonably well. Chris drove the way he does, I called the pacenotes well enough and we got into a flow. Trouble was, I felt vulnerable the entire time. The BMW was older than me and the roll cage appeared flimsy, which meant the very stout trees rushing by us at 80mph looked very dangerous indeed. I knew then that co-driving wasn’t for me.

Still, stage one went fairly well. But I mis-read the tulips on the way to stage two and got us hopelessly lost. Another car followed us in the desperately mistaken belief we knew where we were going. But we found our way and made it to the start of stage two. This time we had our helmets on and belts tightened in plenty of time.

Over the following seven or eight minutes, I made every co-driving mistake it’s possible to make, as well as one or two that until then had been thought impossible. The pacenotes at one point clearly signalled a set of big bumps with a caution symbol. I called the note, but not with anything like enough urgency. We rattled over those bumps at speed, the series of impacts almost violent enough to make me drop my pacenotes. I honestly thought we were having a crash. The underside of the car took a real walloping.

It upset my flow. I lost my place in the notes and called a five right, that being a very fast corner, when in fact the bend up ahead was a hairpin. We only went off a little bit. Later in the stage I lost my place again and Chris had to drive by sight. We came around a tight left, saw another set of those baffling stage-side signs and neither of us realised they indicated the end of the stage. We sailed through, only realising our mistake when we also sailed past the stop line. That’s as big a no-no as you get in rallying. I had to get out, run back up the stage, apologise endlessly and hand over a bit of paper I still didn’t fully understand.

Onwards we went to stage three, sheepish and feeling like morons. As we waited to head into the third stage, a marshal wandered over with instructions to give us a bollocking. Instead, he took pity on these two no-hopers. It was around then – and how delighted I was to see – that we noticed an oil slick emerging from underneath our car. That impact over the bumps on the previous stage had whacked the sump guard, shoved a stone into the sump itself and smashed a hole in it. A holed sump is game over. I don’t think I even pretended to be disappointed.

And that was my one and only attempt at rally co-driving. Maybe there’s a kind of wisdom in recognising when you’re not cut out for something and never, ever trying it again. Or maybe I’m just a wimp. Anyway, hopefully you now understand why I will forever hold the likes of Daniel Elena in such high regard.