Obituary: Russell Brookes

Russell Brookes, who died on 30 October 2019, was one of the great characters of British rallying.

His career was a curious one, spanning as it does the years in which British drivers failed to make much of an impression on the world rallying scene, but also the greatest years of the British Open Rally Championship, when the best drivers in the world came to the British Isles to take on the home drivers, and often as not lost to them. Outside of Britain Brookes' best result on a World Rally Championship event was sixth. On home ground though he took on, and at some stage beat, Bjorn Waldegard, Walter Rohrl, Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikkola, Stig Blomqvist, Timo Salonen and Colin McRae, all future World Rally Champions.

Between Roger Clark's victory on the 1976 RAC Rally, to Colin McRae's on the 1993 Rally of New

Zealand, no British driver won a round of the World Rally Championship. These were British rallying's wilderness years, when our national series was a ghetto which drivers were unable to escape from. These were also, pretty much, the years of Brookes's rallying career. In his first full season in the British national rally championship he was dicing with Clark, and in his last with McRae.

Brookes joined British rallying top division in 1976 in his distinctively liveried Andrews Heat for
Hire Ford Escort RS1800. As a young driver who was quick, a bit too quick, and he had to crash his way down to a pace in which he could finish a rally However, he immediately made his mark as by being quicker than the great Roger Clark.

The next year he won the British Rally Championship, after a tremendous dice around the stages with Penti Airikkala in the Vauxhall Chevette RS2300. He also got a drive on a World rally, with Ford sending him to Corsica in an attempt to beat Fiat to the world title. He retired with mechanical failure, but managed third on that years Lombard RAC Rally, gaining a prestigious A seeding for the 1978 season.

The next year the British National Rally Championship became the British Open, and the rest of the world started to take notice. As well as Penti, the British resident Finn, Finnish aces Hannu Mikkola, Markku Alen and Kyosti Hamalainen came over to take on the British boys. They did not have an easy time of it. Brookes won the Circuit of Ireland and then, on the Argyll based Burmah International, he ended up on exactly the same overall time as Hannu Mikkola. This was the first international rally ever to end in a tie, and as cars are now timed to the thousandth of the second this is a record that will stand forever. On that year's RAC Rally Brookes came third to retain his A seeding and complete a Ford hat trick.

The 1979 Open was just as competitive. Brookes won the Scottish, after a long duel with one Jimmy McRae. Airikkale won the series, but the Brookes and McRae battle was the shape of things to come. On the RAC Rally that year Brookes did one better than the previous year and he finished second, with four future World Champions behind him (five if you could Markku Alen). His career was on a high and the future looked bright. Surely a drive at World level beckoned?

Alas, it was not so. Ford retired from rallying to develop a replacement for the venerable Escort RS.
They only expected to be gone for a year or so, but ended up being out of top level competition for nearly six years. All the Ford drivers had to find other teams, and Brookes chose Talbot, whose Sunbeam Lotus had shown promise at the hands of Tony Pond in the previous year's Open, It was a bad choice.

Talbot would win the 1981 World Rally Championship with Henri Toivonen and Guy Frequeline, but Brookes was left with nly an underpowered car and British Open events. Fourth place on the 1980 RAC was his only memorable result with the car.

For the 1982 season Brookes signed up for Vauxhall. The HS had become the HSR, and one of the best two wheel drive rally cars ever, at least on British events.

Unfortunately for Brookes this was the year the Audi Quattro arrived on the British Open. Every British Open rally entered by a Works Quattro was won by a Quattro, leaving Brookes and the rest of the two wheel drive contingent fighting for second place. The tarmac rounds were another matter though, and here Brookes and McRae resumed their old rivalry. In 1982 McRae had the edge and won the Open, but in 1983 Brookes beat the Scot and wold have won the series too, had not the following year's World Champion, Stig Blomqvist, beaten them both in his Quattro.

For 1984 the Chevette finally followed the Escort into retirement and Brookes embrace Group B with the Open Manta 400, still sporting Andrews sponsorship. He was now McRae's team mate and the two of them had another epic dice. Although it never won a World event, the Manta 400 was the perfect car for the British Open's almost equal mix of tarmac and gravel. The Quattros won in the forests, but in the championship it was McRae from Brookes.

The following year though Brookes would have his revenge. He was runner up to Mikkola's Quattro in Yorkshire and then had to gift a win in Ireland to McRae's on team orders. He retired in Wales and was third in Scotland before blasting the Opel to a win on the tarmac of Ulster. This put him level on points with McRae going into the last round on the Isle of Man. It was an epic duel. Malcolm Wilson blew his chances by crashing his Quattro, so it came down to a straight fight between the old rivals in their Mantas. This time the rally, and the championship, went to Brookes.

Brookes clearly wasn't going to quit on a car that had given him his second championship. However, in 1986 Group B finally arrived on mass. In a packed field of Metro 6R4s and Quattros, a Peugeot 205T16, a Sport Quattro and an RS200 (which won) the old two wheel drive car was completely out gunned. For 1987 though everything changed. Group B was banned from European and World rallies, and four wheel drive Group B cars from everything. The result was a confusing series in which Brookes drove is Manta 400 on rounds that were only part of the British Open, but had to switch to a Group A Opel Kadett GSi for rounds that were also in the European Championship. Brookes won again in Ireland in the Manta, but there was no way the little Kadett could take on the Ford Sierra Cosworth, which now dominated Group A, and Brookes had a disappointing season. The following year though Brookes was able to transfer his Andrews Heat for Hire colours onto his own Cossie. He wasn't in time to enter the full season, but it was a useful learning experience and he was well placed to battle McRae again for the title in 1989.

Time though was marching on, and Brookes once again found himself with old technology. The Toyota Celica GT4 had arrived, combining four wheel drive traction, with turbo charged power and, thanks to its viscous coupling differential, two wheel drive handling. In the hands of Dai Lewellin it dominated the gravel rounds, but was no pushover on the tarmac either. There were also new drivers on the scene. One Gwyndaff Evans managed to beat Brookes on the Ulster, after the English driver's turbo cut out on the last stage, and there was a new McRae on the scene too. Colin had written off his Group N Cossie by crashing it into the rock I was standing on in Wales (that is completely true, my friend Simon still has the car's whale-tail), but for the last round of the championship he was promoted to Group A and proved faster than his dad.

This was the gravel Audi Sport Rally in mid Wales, the final round of the series. Brookes had had a solid season. The only time he'd failed to make the podium was in Scotland, when a last stage engine problem dropped him to fourth. On the Manx he'd been trailing Mark Lovell in the other Andrews Sierra, but team orders gave him the win. Brookes was slightly ahead of Llewellin on points, but the Toyota driver was favorite to win the gravel event. Brookes drove like he hadn't driven since his Escort days, pushing the big Sierra to the limit. He matched Llewelling for pace, but it couldn't last. He went off and lost four minutes, handing Llewellin the rally and the championship. The Welshman afterwards quipped "I guess there weren't many Welsh spectators to push Russell back when he went off."

In 1990 it all started to change. Andrews Heat for Hire ended their sponsorship and Brookes had to
scrabble around to get the money together to enter the series. Llewellin won again and Brookes had a disappointing year.

1991 though finally saw Brookes in four wheel drive machinery. He had an oversized Ford Sapphire Cosworth whilst Colin McRae had an oversized Subaru Legacy. The result was another epic Brookes/McRae duel around the British Isles. Brookes beat McRae in Wales when the Scot stuffed the Legacy into the scenery, but the other rallies were a lot closer. In Scotland Colin took the lead, but Brookes set five fastest stage times in a row and was hauling him in until a driveshaft broke. Brookes finished second to Colin, but did manage to stay ahead of old rival Jimmy. Brookes sat out the Circuit of Ireland, was ill during the Ulster, and couldn't match the pace of the future World Champion in Wales or on the Isle of Man. This meant McRae entered the last round only needing a points finish. Brookes finished second but McRae's third was enough to make him British Champion. At the end of the season Brookes retired.

In retirement Brookes became a star of the British historic rally scene. Like many who'd only seen him flashing through the trees, this was finally a time to meet him and hear him speak. Always charming, he had enough stories to entertain at any event he attended.

His adventures in the Paris-Dakar rally being a staple of such events. In the days when the event was still held in the African desert he drove a service barge one year. Sleeping whilst the driver was at the wheel, he was woken by the on-board mechanic. His hard drinking and chain smoking co-driver had suffered a heart attack at the wheel, his foot still jammed on the accelerator. After bringing the vehicle to a stop Brookes revived the man with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, not a pleasant experience, but an imminent sand storm meant the medical helicopter couldn't fly, so they had to drive him to the next bivouac. This they did with the unconscious co-driver strapped into his seat, a drive shaft stuck down the back of his overalls and taped to his helmet to stop his head flopping around.

It's sad that we won't be hearing any of these stories again. I last saw Brookes at the 2019 Race retro at Stoneleigh Park. He was racing around on his mobility scooter whilst there were no less than three replica Andrews Heat for Hire cars on display, which I think this shows the impact he had on British rallying. He will be missed.