“I really wanted him to be a good footballer, but it didn’t work out. There was absolutely no expectations whatsoever from my behalf, for him to ever become a professional driver. I’m very proud obviously, he’s surpassed my expectations many years ago and still going strong.”
The words are those of Gwyndaf Evans, who speaks with a beaming smile as he recounts how his son Elfyn has developed into Britain’s brightest hope to follow in the footsteps of world rally champions Colin McRae and Richard Burns.
The football career may not have panned out, but football’s loss is very much rallying’s gain. The younger Elfyn has so far chalked up eight World Rally Championship wins, and this year the factory Toyota driver is once again firmly in the fight to claim rallying’s ultimate prize.
Growing up in north-west Wales with a father that lit up the British rallying scene in the 1980s and 1990s, it was perhaps inevitable that Elfyn would get the rallying bug, despite Gwyndaf’s efforts to steer him away.
“It was never the target at all,” the 1996 British Rally Championship winner and runner-up on four further occasions explains to Autosport at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. “But the more we got involved with him, the more he wanted to progress. Probably I was quite strict with him. I set some targets and he had to achieve targets before we would move further up or get further support.
“But ultimately it paid off, because he superseded my expectations and the level of commitment. As a family and with motorsport, we like to keep our feet on the ground. We like to be normal people and still do today.”
It comes as no surprise that Elfyn’s earliest rally memories are of his father, who also ran a family garage and drove a school bus to make a living, grappling a Ford Escort RS2000 on Welsh gravel roads. But like many growing up in this era, it was a certain McRae that also made an impression.
“Obviously I followed Dad competing from the beginning,” says Elfyn. “I would say probably the first memory is spectating Rally GB. I remember being quite young and actually seeing Colin McRae. I was waiting to see Dad, but Colin was the first car that came into view with the Impreza at completely 90 degrees, the old super spectacular. That's probably one of the first memories.
“And I have a vague memory of sitting in a RS2000 around Boreham [Ford Motorsport’s base in Essex] and not being able to see anything, but being jerked about in the belts. Those would be two of the earliest memories I have.”
"Dad is a pretty hard worker, both in the business and in terms of the driving as well. Obviously, I've been guided from him as to how to apply myself in that regard"
Elfyn Evans
Once it was clear Elfyn was to follow in his father's wheeltracks, Gwyndaf certainly provided a benchmark to learn from. Aside from his domestic prowess against the likes of Alister McRae, Martin Rowe and Mark Higgins in the BRC, Evans Sr was able to ruffle the feathers of the world’s best on Rally GB. Sixth was his best result in the famous 1995 WRC title showdown. But as Elfyn recalls, the pair didn’t actually do a lot of driving together.
“Obviously some of his driving ability [has rubbed off] I would say, but growing up we did surprisingly little driver training together,” says Elfyn. “There was a year in 2009 where I did things I shouldn't have done on the road, and I had this driving ban [for dangerous driving].
“But that was probably the year I picked up and learned the most, even though I didn't do any driving myself. Dad was still doing a bit, and I sat with him on a few tests and probably studied a bit more, and that was probably the year that I picked up more from a driving point of view.
“I remember being back in my first test in the Fiesta after that year away, and I could beat him straight away. So, I’d obviously been studying a little bit. Otherwise, dad is a pretty hard worker, both in the business and in terms of the driving as well. Obviously, I've been guided from him as to how to apply myself in that regard, and that's probably taken me a good step of the way.”
Gwyndaf chimes in: “I was over 40 before he could beat me though”, before explaining the moment he realised that his son had the potential to become the force in rallying he is today.
“He wanted to do the WRC Academy, which was a huge commitment from myself,” remembers Gwyndaf. “I did a deal and I said, we can find enough budget to go and do three WRC rallies, Finland, France and the RAC in an R2 Fiesta [in 2011]. I said 'you're going to have to prove to me that you're good enough to have a commitment from me and sponsors to go and do the Academy the following year'.
“We had a lot of friends and a lot of help, no doubt we couldn’t have done it without them. We went over to Finland, and we did a small rally, small test, and I sat in with him. Honestly, it blew my mind even then how quick he was and how efficient he was behind the wheel. I could barely tell him anything because I was just taken aback. And now he has gone on and won Finland [at WRC level] twice.
“During that test, some of our Finnish friends came to me and they said ‘we have been watching your son, he’s incredible’. And I thought ‘if that is coming from Finnish rally enthusiasts that know their stuff, then we were on the right track.’”
Elfyn was indeed on the right track. In 2012 he won the WRC Academy, the R2 title in the BRC and the UK Fiesta Sport Trophy. The following season he made his top-flight WRC debut, finishing sixth in Sardinia for M-Sport. A first podium arrived in Argentina in 2015 before Evans played a starring role in arguably M-Sport’s greatest day in 2017. He took a maiden win at his home round in Wales as the British squad sealed the drivers’, co-drivers’ and manufacturers’ crowns with Sebastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia.
His greatest successes have come since joining Toyota in 2020. Evans has finished as the WRC runner-up in three of the past four seasons and last year became the first Brit to win the WRC's holy grail, Rally Finland, for a second time.
Through all of this, the father-son bond has remained strong and that relationship has even extended into a professional sense on WRC events. This is because Gwyndaf is part of Elfyn’s trusty route note crew, alongside the latter’s former co-driver Daniel Barritt. The duo diligently pass through the stages two hours before they are live, to pass on any valuable changes of road conditions before Elfyn charges by.
Route note crews are a valuable part of the modern-day WRC, given rallies are often won over seconds rather than minutes. That's a point Elfyn can attest, having been on the wrong side of a 0.6s defeat to 2021 title rival Ogier in Croatia. Any information that can be passed from route note crew to driver can be crucial but, as Elfyn explains, Gwyndaf hasn’t just landed this important role just by being his father.
“It has obviously been going quite well,” says Elfyn. “He puts a lot of energy and I think I would struggle to find anyone else to do that.
“Obviously, he's in the position because he does a good job at it, not because he's my dad. I keep stressing that when people ask; I'm never going to find anybody to put as much energy in that job as he does. In terms of preparation, he does a similar level of studying the videos too.
"It is feeding back any hazards, but without slowing him down. That is the difficult bit"
Gwyndaf Evans
“We are in high level sport and like any other, we are looking for all the fine details and want things as accurate as possible. It is a challenging job, where the stages are always evolving, and there's an element of anticipation if you're running a bit further back on the road of what the cars in front will do.
“Ultimately, conditions can change a lot in two hours. So in a world where we want all the finest information, finest details, it's very hard to get that right. He can keep his job for now,” Elfyn adds with a wry smile.
Hard is indeed the operative word as Gwyndaf interjects to share just how difficult the role is not only in a professional capacity but in an emotional sense given the recipient of the information.
“It is bloody difficult, I can tell you,” he smiles. “It is hard graft and the pressure is at 120%. But it’s so rewarding when he does well.
“Basically, about two hours before the stage goes live we drive around the special stages with Elfyn’s final version of the pace notes. Dan reads the notes back to me and I will call out if there's any gravel or mud, water and any hazards basically.
“It's another set of eyes on the notes, although I can’t change much at that speed anyway. It is feeding back any hazards, but without slowing him down. That is the difficult bit; you don’t want to say everything, because you don’t want to slow him down, but equally you don’t want him to go off the road.
“I would say it is a big role. We have to believe that, because obviously you need a lot of strength in that car. People don't realise we start at three in the morning and we don't get back until late at night.”
Pushing the professional aspect of this job to one side, Gwyndaf simply wants the best for his son. Elfyn has already surpassed the achievements of his own rally career and, sitting just 13 points adrift in the title race with five rallies to go, has his sights firmly set on ending Britain's two-decade wait for a world rally champion.
