Mystery Monday: Andrew Kellitt – Wales Rally GB is more than just a four day effort

As route coordinator for the event, I’m one person in a team, one part of a machine. We all work and build and move towards one point each season. This point. This week. Right now, we’ve done everything we can possibly do, the planning and the preparation’s all there. Now we wait. We wait for the weather; we enjoy the calm before any possible storms which could alter the course of the supertanker.

This job, like yours and everybody’s, has stress and tricky times, but ultimately I still fully appreciate the incredible privilege and honour which comes with it: for one week every year, the World Rally Championship comes to our patch and we become the custodians of the greatest sport and the greatest series around.

With that privilege and honour comes the responsibility to deliver. And this delivery is what we’ve been working on for the last 51 weeks.

Preparation for this year’s event started with an immediate debrief following last year’s rally. What was good, what worked, what didn’t work?

I’ve been doing this job for a while, so I’ve got a good idea of what I want from the route and what’s going to work from the sporting and commercial side. I was fortunate enough to start this job under the guidance of Malcolm Neill – a man who understood both sides of the event tremendously well.

My first trip into the forests was in February. There’s not much point going in before then, the winter weather can still have quite a big impact on the condition of the roads. But by late February or early March, you can see how well the stages have wintered. Then it’s a case of talking to Natural Resources Wales, to find out things like what plans they have for harvesting and the potential for any work on possible windfarm sites.

One thing it is easy to overlook when you arrive in a forest is that it’s actually a great big wood and paper factory. These places are fantastic and have great opportunities for recreation, but fundamentally, they are places of work and getting the trees out comes first and second. I remember when we used to use the Kielder forest in Northumberland – we used to start the stages late in the day, just when the light was starting to fade. People thought this was a cunning plan to make ‘Killer Kielder’ even tougher in the dusk and dark – it wasn’t. It was done because it meant we could get in there after the forestry workers had done their day’s logging.

When we were going up to Kielder and the like, my job was quite different. You might remember the event was sponsored by Network Q, Lombard before that and – as the slightly older readers of this website will recall – the Daily Mirror. With those kind of backers, there was no geographical bias to the rally and a linear route running up and down the country was very much favoured to help spread the word of Lombard and the like.

Now we’re largely funded by Wales – with additional backing from Dayinsure – the route is very much centred in Wales. We’ve enjoyed an incredible relationship with the Welsh Government going all the way back to 2000 and our time here has allowed me to explore some of the best stages in the world in the Principality.

For the first time since 1999, this year’s event will include competitive mileage on the eastern side of the border, with the inclusion of the Cholmondeley Castle stage in Cheshire.

Running a rally solely out of Wales brings a different kind of challenge for me. It’s about keeping a reasonably predictable route fresh. For example, this week, we’re running the first day’s stages in the opposite direction to previous years and we’ve included a control in Chester on Friday night. Chester has a great history and heritage with this event – it’s where Colin McRae was crowned world champion in 1995 – and I’m sure there will be a fantastic atmosphere in the city when the cars arrive after a long day in the woods.

On top of that, there’s constant liaison with the emergency services and with local residents – not everybody’s a rally fan who lives on the route and we have to work with them to reassure them about what we’re doing and asking them to put up with for a day.

As I’m sure is the case with every job, the level of paperwork has risen considerably in the time I’ve been doing this – and email can be both a blessing and a curse at times!

By the time we get to this point in planning, the mainstay of the work is done. I have now moved into Deeside and will spend the next week in and around Rally Control, keeping a close eye on what’s happening in the preparation of the roads and then, once the event gets started, what’s going on in the stages and on the road sections to the stages.

I work very closely with clerk of the course Iain Campbell and our managing director Ben Taylor throughout the year and for us, collectively, this week’s about the potential for firefighting and the rapid implementation of plans B, C and D. Believe me, we have them.

Last year we got the call on Saturday night to say the service park had been hit by exceptionally high winds causing damage to some of the team structures. We couldn’t foresee exactly what was going to happen, but we had people on standby ready to deal with it when it did.

Hopefully the move forward into an October date will bring some nice autumn sunshine. If you’re free this weekend, head to Deeside and the surrounding forests – you won’t believe what the best drivers in the world can do with a car.

Andrew Kellitt was talking to David Evans.

Photography by Ben Miles and David Evans.