About Me
I am 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and have been involved with rallying from a very early age with a family background in rallying. I have been competing in the co-drivers seat since I was only 14, and done road rallies until I was 16, and that’s when I started to compete on stage rallies. From 2002 through to 2004, I competed on various local rallies gaining valuable experience before competing further a field. In 2004 I netted two outright victories on the Lion Stages and Solway Stages. In 2005 I thought it was time to gain more experience, so I found a seat with Martin Laverty from Northern Ireland; it was my first year taking part in a full championship.
The Peugeot 206 1400 challenge was my first, and with competitors coming from all corners of the country it was a great season for me. Never out of the top three on every rally of the season, we ended up 2nd overall in the Peugeot Championship, I was 1st under 21 in the ANCRO Championship and also gained a few more outright victories on the local events that I was able to fit in amongst our National events. The following year saw Martin and I pair up once again, and this year we went one better; winning the Peugeot Championship on the last round in Wales was more than we could have asked for. 2006 was a busy year for me, I also competed on the BTRDA Championship with Tristan Pye in a Subaru Impreza N11. This was also another very successful seat, finishing the year champion group N and 1st under 25 co-driver. I also competed in Ireland for the first time, finishing 6th overall on the Dogleap Rally with Tristan.
2007 was to bring new opportunities to my rallying career, I applied for the MSA British Rally Academy, and with hundreds of applicants, I was rather doubtful of getting in, but when I received a phone call saying I had made it in and it was getting announced to the press later that week I was over the moon. I competed with Martin for a third year in a row, but this year was totally different. Martin purchased a Citroen C2R2 during the winter break, but it wasn’t quite as simple as you would expect. The car had been heavily crashed on a rally and needed a lot of work to get it back into working order, so Martin handed the project over to me and my Dad Ronnie. Over two months we rebuilt the car to its former shape and it was ready for the first event of 2007. That year was also new to me, the British Rally Championship, all events were International status, competing in England, Ireland, Isle Of Man, Scotland and Wales.
The Citroen C2R2 Cup proved a hit, with the new ‘one make’ championship coming into the BRC it was going to be interesting how the year panned out. The first round didn’t go our way, an accident on the final day of the event put us out so we had to wait until the next round in Scotland to make an impression and pick up some points, which is what we did. A steady run to 4th overall, and from then on our season only got better. An outright victory on the penultimate round in Yorkshire saw u go into the last event, Wales Rally GB, with a chance of winning the championship. There were three people in with a shout, so as you can imagine it was all to go for. It was a double points scoring opportunity on this event, and with us getting top points on both occasions saw us win the 2007 C2R2 Cup by a margin of 7 points. This was a shock to us both, as we did not expect to win the series.
For 2008 I was re-selected for the MSA British Rally Academy, and I was to take full advantage of the advice and training from the panel of people involved to give me the experience to reach the highest level possible in my rallying career, the World Rally Championship. It started in a fantastic way, being asked to co-drive for New Zealand Rally Champion Sam Murray on the Rally Wairarapa. Sadly, despite travelling to the other side of the world, and having a good recce, we went off on the first stage and retired. 20,000 km for 5 minutes in the hot seat!