You’d be hard pressed to find anybody as passionate about rallying as George Donaldson – so much so that he likens his chosen sport to a nationality.
Formerly a scholarship-winning driver who then found his way as a team manager and sporting director, forging a long World Rally Championship career with Toyota before spells at Mitsubishi and Subaru, the Scotsman has worked with some of the very best in the business including World champions Juha Kankkunen, Carlos Sainz, Tommi Makinen, Petter Solberg, Didier Auriol and Richard Burns.
Later finding his space in the media world, first as a reporter for the WRC’s rally radio service and today having fun with DirtFish as a regular podcast pundit, George tackled all the MN readers’ questions with a blend of passion and grace, offering forthright views on rallying’s future and the direction of his own career, and sharing countless tales about life in the service park when rallying’s popularity was booming.
But it’s clear that driving a rally car is what brings George the most joy. We thank him for his time and his stories – and trust us, there were plenty more at-hand that we simply don’t have space to print…
Question: Your passion for rallying is obvious, but where did it come from?
Mark Weatherley
Via email
George Donaldson: “It came from standing in a wet, rainy forest in Kielder in 1976 on the RAC Rally at about 0100hrs, seeing my first rally car on a forest stage which was Stig Blomqvist, who came past me at a speed which was incredible. The car went past me at four or five times the speed I thought was possible, with all the brake discs glowing white – and I can still see the callipers, they were orange. I’d swear to God even the brake lines were glowing!
“That was it, I just thought ‘this is amazing, I’ve got to do it’. Driving the streets of Edinburgh, the cobbled streets in the wet were great fun so you’d go sideways everywhere at no miles per hour. So the two things combined: Stig Blomqvist showing me what could be done, and my mother’s Vauxhall Viva showing me how sideways I could get on cobbled streets.”
MN: What led you to standing on that RAC Rally stage?
GD: “I was always interested in motorsport and the last few years of school you tend to make lifelong friends, and two of them used to marshal at Ingliston, the local racing circuit. I’d been there a few times and it was interesting.
“I’ve always liked motor racing and motor cars, and being a city boy most of it was limited to TV, whatever you got on that was mostly racing, but I wasn’t overly enamoured by Formula 1. I’d watch it when it was on, but I used to love rallycross when that was on Grandstand or World of Sport. It was only through the mid-late ’70s you started to see more rallies on TV, just as I became really interested in it.
“My friend David Brown had been to a couple of rallies with
