HOW A BRITISH RALLY CHAMPION MADE HIS JUNIOR WRC DEBUT IN THE OTHER SEAT
Matt Edwards is certainly no stranger to rally cars. Twice a British Rally champion and the 2018 BTRDA Gold Star champion too, what Edwards doesn’t know about pedalling a rally car at full tilt isn’t worth knowing. But guiding it through a stage by calling the notes on the other side of the car?
Granted he’s a reliable hand, but he’s probably not who you’d automatically call upon to sit beside you in the Junior WRC.
However that’s exactly what Ruairi Bell did just days before Rally Estonia.
A terrifying accident on Portugal’s Rali do Alto Tamega a week prior to Estonia had injured Bell’s regular co-driver Darren Garrod and left Bell with a predicament. Bell and Garrod flew home early on Sunday – five days before Rally Estonia’s first day – but a trip to the doctor’s on Monday morning confirmed the worst. Garrod was told first day he couldn’t compete in Estonia.
“We were like ‘what do we do’?,” Bell says. “Do we go and get a co-driver, someone completely new I’ve never sat with? What do I do? The logical thing was Matt. On
