Now people car fire the things in parc ferme and still claim good championship points. If that’s there to be taken advantage of then they’ve done exactly the right thing, but it makes the championship harder to win.
Q:
There’s a lot of local support in Yorkshire for rallying but there’s also a lot of competition on the stages from competitors who hark from these parts. Where’s the local threat coming from?
JM:
Ryan Champion’s going to be strong. This will be the first time that Ryan and myself will be in equal cars where we can both see who’s the fastest. I think Ryan’s extremely hungry, he’s driven a cracking year this season, he’s really shown a lot of people up and he’s put himself right up there on the map. It’s about time as there’s nobody more deserving than Ryan and [co-driver] Craig Thorley. They’ve tried extremely hard to get here and long may it continue.
Q:
How are you approaching this event?
JM:
I’m going to be mindful of what Ryan, Mark Higgins and what all the others are doing, but my full focus is the Mitsubishi Evolution Challenge.
Q:
It’s been a pretty amazing year for Mark Higgins. What do you think has been the key to his season?
JM:
I think the key to Mark’s success is that he never gives up, he puts his heart and soul into rallying and motorsport. I’m fully involved in my business as well as my leisure, which is my rallying still. Mark, and his brother David, are both always doing one to one rally tuition with customers or doing stuff in the world championship. They’re driving cars almost every other day. That’s the big key to keeping on the button all the time, it’s no good having a month or two months off before you drive a car again.
Q:
So what is your business away from the rallying?
JM:
We do a lot of technical work for Toyota Japan into Europe. The company is Merlin International and we buy and sell wheels and tyres. There’s a link with Team Dynamics, one of my other sponsors, but steel wheels and tyres is what we predominantly work with and we export them all over the world. It’s quite an interesting diverse business considering I should have been a pig farmer like my father.
Q:
International Rally Yorkshire is a one day event, how should that change the focus?
JM:
It’s how it should be with the rally on a single day. We haven’t lost the long rallies in the championship, we still got events like Rally Isle of Man where there’s three hard long days, but I’m a big believer that this is a big sprint rally.
