Jardine and Williams complete Wales Rally GB challenge in style

When Sky Sports News? F1 analyst Tony Jardine asked me to co-drive for him on Wales Rally GB at world-class level, I ended up saying yes straight away.

That was just two months ago, and in that short time we had to complete four national rallies in order for Me to gain my international navigators licence required to compete in Wales Rally GB. The aim was simply to complete the only British round of the World Rally Championship (WRC). However, we exceeded out expectations finishing 26th overall and first in class 3.

It was one of the toughest weeks of my life! average of 3-4hrs sleep a night for five days, there was two day of Recce, in which one of them i was very sick and so had to miss out the final day. The rally started with three stages at night, then three further days of rallying. the toughest begin the final day of Wales Rally GB (17 November) which started with the Dyfnant stage, followed by Penllyn and Clocaenog ? the Power Stage of the WRC finale. Then it was on to the Kinmel

Park RallyFest stage and finally the famous, spectacular Great Orme where the crowds flocked to cheer on their rallying heroes.

However, we suffered the toughest day of the rally so far. There was an issue at service in the morning meaning we were late departing and were issued a time penalty. At the start of the second stage the intercom failed forcing me to shout the pace notes to Tony for over quarter of an hour. Then we endured turbo issues and to top it off they got a puncture at the end of the second run of Kinmel Park.

Despite all this, we still managed to win our class and finished in the top 26 on one of the toughest rallies on the WRC calendar. This was Tony?s best ever Rally GB finish (his top result previously was 35th in 2002) and an incredible feat for me, having gone from rally novice to fully fledged WRC competitor with an incredibly short training period. Now...what's the next challenge going to be?!