at Wales Rally GB
World Champion co-driver Nicky Grist delivers final team briefing Sky Sports broadcaster Tony Jardine and national newspaper journalist Jonathan McEvoy are making final preparations to take on the world’s best in the Wales Rally GB – Britain’s only round of the World Rally Championship on 1 - 3 December.
McEvoy is now the proud owner of an International Rally License following his grueling training and events schedule which started in September. Rookie co-driver Jonathan McEvoy was set the challenging task, by driver Tony Jardine, of training for and competing in the Wales Rally GB despite never having taken part in a rally before. However, he was thrown a lifeline by Nicky Grist, winner of 21 world rally titles including 17 while co-driving for Colin McRae, who agreed to mentor the fledgling media navigator.
Grist and McEvoy recently completed a seven hour rally briefing in an effort to elevate McEvoy’s training to world level. The media duo of Jardine and McEvoy have competed in four national events as part of their preparation for Wales Rally GB, finishing first in class at their opening event – the Plains Rally – and repeating the result on their third outing at the Tempest Rally. A commendable achievement, especially for rally virgin McEvoy. Four national rally finishes and five intense navigation rally training sessions with Nicky Grist, including a training event at Silverstone, gave McEvoy the required amount of upgrade signatures to secure his International license.
After consideration from the MSA, the UK’s motorsport governing body, McEvoy was awarded his International co-drivers license with just one week to spare before the start of the WRC event. The Wales Rally GB will be the grand finale for the Daily Mail / Sportinglife.com team. The media pairing will compete against 118 amateur and professional crews from 32 countries, the highest entry on Britain’s round of the WRC since 2001.
The tough finale of the World Championship will cover 222 competitive miles of welsh forests, split into 17 special stages over three days in the UK’s biggest motorsport event. Jardine and McEvoy’s Castrol owned M-Sport Fiesta has been running on Kumho tyres, which have provided unbeatable service so far, standing the team in good stead for the demanding stage miles that await them. At his final training session with Nicky Grist, McEvoy listened intently, in an effort to up his game for the World Rally Championship.
Rally guru Grist has been mentoring the team since its launch in September, and is pleased with McEvoy’s progress. “Jon has come a long way since his first rally outing. He has managed to learn, in two months, what it would have taken others to learn in at least a year,” said Grist.
Nicky continued, “He’s done the theory – now he has to put it in to practice. He must not get complacent now though, as the Wales Rally GB is renowned for catching out even the most experienced of competitors. The intensity of our final seven hour session reflected his elevated status to the world stage of rallying.”
Despite this being McEvoy’s first ever appearance in a World Rally Championship, Jardine will be making his 14th entry into the Wales Rally GB, or Britain’s equivalent WRC event. Jardine commented, “Wales Rally GB is the big one.
It’s the course we both want to complete, where we will both have to extend 110% concentration at all times. There is no room for errors like we had on our last rally where Jon jumbled up his pace notes and made late calls which led to scary high speed moments. We want the satisfaction of a good finish after all the hard graft.” The Sportinglife.com backed Fiesta ST will be run and prepared by ProSpeed from York, who have provided on-event support for the media team on all rallies leading up to the Wales Rally GB.
ProSpeed team boss Olly Marshall, formerly a successful rally competitor in the Junior World Rally Series, has full confidence in the media duo. Marshall said, “Tony and Jon have been fully committed to achieving their goal of competing in the Wales Rally GB, and have worked really hard to reach the stage they are at now. We have put a lot of work into making the car reliable but we have only competed in one day national events so far. Now we have a three day grueling World Rally to complete with all the organisational and logistical challenges to go with it. We are all going to work hard for the right result.”
