Marcus Gronholm

Fast Finns are nothing new in the world of rallying. Since the World Rally Championship began in 1979, Finland has collected 13 drivers’ titles, almost double the number of any other country. Rallying is like a religion in the land of the 1,000 lakes.

Marcus Gronholm was the sixth Finn to be celebrated as a world champion. But for years, it looked as though the tall fella from Inkoo would be overlooked. Coming from a region close to the Swedish border, Marcus was not considered the most fashionable of Finns. This goes some way to explaining how it was 10 years after his world championship debut, that he signed his first full-time professional contract. With the benefit of hindsight, the signs of Gronholm’s greatness were there for all to see, with an enormously impressive set of results for an under-funded and seemingly out of favour Finn.

Then Peugeot saw them. And signed a 31-year-old Gronholm up in an instant.

Marcus contested 60 rounds of the World Rally Championship in a Peugeot 206 WRC, winning 15 events and two world titles. Every now and then, global motorsport throws up a car-driver combination which works with devastating effect. The Gronholm-206 partnership was one of those. Marcus made the car his own, while the Peugeot defined the shape and success of his career.

The 206’s replacement, the 307, was nothing like the WRC force its predecessor had been and, while he won three more rallies, Marcus would not put together another significant title challenge until his two years at Ford in 2006 and 2007.

Gronholm became an enormously popular member of the Ford family – and remains a regular in the blue corner of the service park on current rallies. His return to the WRC in a Focus RS WRC 08 on the Swedish Rally was one of the stories of the sport. He set fastest times, but an electrical fault halted his charge to a possible sixth win on the rally he loves the most.

 

Markko Martin

Markko Martin never won a world rally title but he did triumph on some of the championship’s most iconic events following his rise from relative obscurity in his native Estonia.

During his three-year stint with the factory Ford team between 2002 and 2004, Martin was a winner in Finland, Corsica and Greece and also added victories in Mexico and Spain for good measure.

But it was his performance on the gruelling Acropolis Rally of 2002 that marked him out as a true star after he had shown glimpses of early promise in a privateer Toyota Corolla before switching to a works Subaru Impreza.

He’d been building his overall lead in Greece when a puncture dropped him back on day two. It handed victory to Colin McRae who said afterwards that he simply had no answer to Martin’s pace.

Martin’s potential was realised when he was asked to lead the factory Ford team in 2003 following McRae’s move to Citroen and he made the most of the opportunity by claiming his maiden victory on the Acropolis Rally of that year, despite a scare on the Elatia stage, where he’d punctured the previous season.

With 20 kilometres of the 34-kilometre test remaining, the bonnet of Martin’s Ford Focus flew up into the car’s windscreen to the extent he could barely see where he was going.

Unwilling to stop to close it due to the amount of time he would have lost, Martin managed to lower himself enough in his seat to peer through a gap beneath the bonnet so he could just about see the road. Listening more intently than ever to co-driver Michael ‘Beef’ Park’s instructions, Martin completed the stage with a time that was just six seconds slower than the overall fastest.

Martin went on to win again that season in Finland after a titanic scrap with local hero Marcus Gronholm and took fifth in the final drivers’ standings. He went two better in 2004 to claim third in the table despite a huge crash on Rally Argentina.

A move to Peugeot followed for 2005 but his season was cut short when co-driver Park was killed when they crashed on Rally GB.

Since then Martin has established his own successful rally team in Estonia. He also acts as a mentor to rising Estonian talent Ott Tanak and has been called up to perform test driving duties for several manufacturers, who have warmed to his no-nonsense approach.

During his WRC career, Martin became close friends with Richard and entered – and won – the inaugural Richard Burns Memorial Rally in September 2008.

 

Guy Wilks

Along with countryman Kris Meeke, Guy Wilks is the Briton best equipped to follow in the footsteps of Richard Burns and one day become world rally champion.

Wilks, 29, has twice held the British title and has also made a strong impression on the international stage as a frontrunner in the Junior World Rally Championship before he became a winner in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.

Like Burns, Wilks progressed through the British rallying ranks and achieved success every step of the way. He started out in a Ford Ka before switching to a Ford Puma and then into a Suzuki Ignis when the Japanese make showed an interest and signed him on a multi-year deal.

His programme also included the highly competitive JWRC where Wilks finished an impressive third overall in 2004 before taking the runner-up spot in 2005, coming close to the title on both occasions.

He finished fourth in the young driver division in 2006 with wins in Argentina and Finland and could quite easily have gone on to take the title had he enjoyed better fortune during the campaign.

Wilks switched his attentions back to Britain for 2007 when he landed a seat in a works Mitsubishi Lancer, the car he used to make his WRC debut in Sweden back in 2002.

He repaid Mitsubishi’s faith by taking the title after a close battle with Mark Higgins and successfully defended his crown the following season.

In 2007, he also embarked on a programme of WRC events in a Ford Focus run by the Ramsport team. He showed plenty of promise but a points finish eluded him until his switch to a Subaru Impreza for Rally Ireland where he finished sixth overall in treacherous conditions.

He spent 2008 splitting his time between his BRC programme and a test and development role with the Honda-blessed JAS Motorsport team of Italy competing in countries such as Australia, Russia and Finland, where he took the two-wheel drive spoils in an impressive 18th overall against drivers with more potent machinery.

After a planned ride with works Subaru team for 2009 evaporated when the make quit the WRC at the 11th hour, Wilks returned to the BRC and was leading the Pirelli International Rally in a Proton Satria Neo Super 2000 until a freak occurrence resulted in the car being destroyed by fire.

Proton was impressed with his pace, however, and handed him a selected IRC campaign before he secured a Skoda UK-backed drive on the season-closing Rally of Scotland, where he claimed victory.

He remained with Skoda in 2010 and was looking to extend his run of podium finishes in the IRC when he crashed heavily in Sardinia and broke his back. His recovery took three months but he returned with a points finish in Czech Republic. He will continue in the series in 2011, albeit at the wheel of a Peugeot UK 207, the company that played such a key role in Richard’s early career.

 

Robert Reid

Richards co-driver Robert Reid now consults in the world of motorsport. Robert holds the position of Performance Director for the UK motorsport governing body, the Motor Sports Association, with responsibility of all driver training and development. He has helped role out and implement the MSA whole sport plan as well as establishing a world leading competitor development pathway and education structure under the MSA Academy banner. Robert also holds positions on the MSA Rallies Committee, MSA Motorsports Council and chairs the MSA Coaching Source Group. On the world stage Robert's company Elite Sports Performance Ltd delivers training programmes for the FIA, the world governing body of motorsport. Robert is also involved with FIA safety and sporting development working groups, and is Vice-President of the World Rally Commission.No longer competing Robert still does occasional commentary, TV and Radio work for Eurosport, North One Sport and World Rally Radio.