Whenever anyone talked to me about being a World Rally Championship CoDriver the conversation always followed the same pattern. They’d initially be impressed that I did something professionally that was perceived to be so exciting, but then they’d quickly come to the conclusion that it was maybe silly enough to drive a rally car at those speeds, but to sit in it alongside the Driver was absolute lunacy. I must admit that there were times over my 13 year professional career that I would agree…

After we’d discussed that World Rally Cars have over 300 horse power, four wheel drive transmissions and can accelerate from 0 – 60 mph on gravel in just over 3 seconds the next question was inevitably about the biggest crash that we’d ever had. Usually at this point they’d say “you must have a lot of trust in Richard”. My response would be “can you imagine how much trust he also has in me?”

The idea of a rally is to drive as quickly as possible on a gravel or tarmac road closed especially for the event. You are competing against the clock and it’s the crew with the lowest aggregate time after all the timed sections that wins. To prepare for each event we’d do a “recce” where we were allowed to drive twice over each timed section at a controlled speed. Richard would dictate to me what he wanted me to read back to him on the event. The second run was an opportunity to check these “pacenotes” as the third time would be for real.

The pacenotes would include the severity of each corner, the best line to take around it and the distance in meters between them. When it came to the event Richard was reliant on his skill, the feedback that he got from the car and the road surface, what he could see and most importantly what I was telling him. Two way trust indeed in what could be a very dangerous environment given any mistake or hesitation on either of our parts. With this trust also came huge respect and a lot of success as we competed in 103 WRC events, won 10 and the WRC title in 2001 as well as being runner up twice.

The trust and respect didn’t finish in the car either as to field a two car team on the 16 annual WRC events all around the world takes an average budget of around Euro 30 million, an on event team of around 60 and a permanent staff of nearly 200 back at base. Part of being a Driver or CoDriver was getting the whole team working together for the common goal. This level of success can never be achieved alone so it was important that all the mechanics, engineers, management and PR team were all motivated and it was in part down to us to make that happen.

Richard and I were totally reliant on a mechanic doing his job whilst lying in the mud or snow and only having 18 minutes to change a gearbox, an engineer making a judgement on a components lifespan or the team management making the right call on tactics. Our part of the bargain was to never give up and always be fully committed. The whole team needed to know that they could trust us to deliver just as we trusted them to do their own specialist tasks.

The same is true in all walks of life where a well motivated team based on mutual trust and respect always achieves more.

Robert Reid
March 2006