Richard Burns

If you ever watch his interviews online, most of them are done in Welsh.

But he's the first British WRC champion since Richard Burns in 2001.

25 years since we've had a British WRC champion.

And obviously Colin McRae was the only one before that.

...

when Reedy won his championship, when Robert Reid and Richard Burns won, they were driving back down the M4 from, from Margam into Cardiff, and he said, "Everybody was trying to race us." And, and it was just like, "Get out the way.

Please don't let us have any traffic-"

Yeah

Every single time, he always misses out because of one tiny little thing, and he'll miss it out by one or two points.

And the last time a Brit, I mean, okay, he's Welsh, but the last time a Brit won World Rally Championship was Richard Burns in 2001.

And before that, it was Colin McRae in 1995.

So it's been a very, very long time.

That was probably as...

Well- I mean, you got to set a course of rally, which is still kind of in development, but I don't know Richard Bur- Richard Burns.

No, that's really really old

I don't remember which one it was, but there's...

I met him at the Autosport show in, I think about 1994, when I was doing Jazz Top Non-Stop.

And coincidentally, I mean, I, I, I mean, I spoke to Gwyndaf in Welsh, and then coincidentally, I went for a ride in the NEC with Richard Burns, who was the last British World Rally Champion.

And it suddenly got me thinking, we lost Richard Burns tragically, and the previous British champion to Richard Burns, Colin McRae.

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, when the car conked out there.

And Richard Burns bec- that was his first World Rally Championship.

And indeed, obviously, Richard Burns was the last British, uh, World Rally Champion.

Colin McRae.

So we've had, uh, an Ira- a, a Scotsman, a, an Englishman, and a, and a Welshman now.

... is...

And he's the only, also the only other person to have been runner-up five times.

Uh, Richard Burns?

So often, though, Evans has been the nearly man in the World Rally Championship.

He's finished second in the standings five times, but he can now finally call himself a World Rally champion and becomes the first Brit to take the crown since Richard Burns back in 2001.

Uh, an unbelievable weekend, mate.

I love a bit of rally.

And, you know, you can, you can search online and jump onto YouTube and, and just take some of the on boards from the World Rally Championship, from, from the history of the World Rally Championship, and you think of the speeds that they're running, how close and how tight they are always, um, to a wall or to a sheer drop or, you know, whatever it might be.

They rely so much on their co-drivers calling out those notes, calling them perfectly, reacting to them, having that dextrous feel, um, absolute, you know, total and absolute bravery.

I remember w- the thing that got me into rally during the '90s, it was, you know, listen, it was, for me, I grew up at a time of, of drivers like Carlos Sainz and Tommi Mäkinen and, and Colin McRae and, uh, and Richard Burns and, and, and those kind of guys, and Petter Solberg, actually, um, Oliver Solberg's dad, um, who was, uh, World Rally Championship in the early 2000s.

And, um, the, the, the Subaru, you know, remember the blue and yellow Subaru-

He's the first UK driver to win the World Rally Champs since the man that launched a billion PlayStations, Colin McRae.

of Colin McLean rally fame, and also Richard Burns, and he's the first Welsh driver to do that.

Toyota drivers feel happy because you've got one, two, three in those, but yeah, that's a Hall of Famer in the commentary curse.

Yeah, really.