How does a WRC co-driver prepare for the unknown?

Winning a World Rally Championship event requires perfect harmony between driver and co-driver. It’s a relationship that will be tested to the limit in the Canary Islands this week.

That’s because an all-new event, Rally Islas Canarias, will make its debut on the WRC calendar. It’s 18 asphalt stages are largely unknown by the majority of crews, creating brand new challenge to conquer.

Before a wheel has been turned, drivers have stated that making precise pace notes to navigate through the tricky stages will be critical. So, how does a co-driver prepare for the unknown?     

Reigning world champion Martijn Wydaeghe, who calls the all-important notes describing the road directions and conditions ahead for Hyundai Motorsport’s Thierry Neuville, has lifted the lid on his preparations. 

Wydaeghe’s preparations to help Neuville deliver the maximum speed through the stages started many weeks ago. It began with the Belgian assessing onboard videos of the stages.

The rally organisers will send videos to all crews featuring onboard vision from a car travelling through the stages at road speed. This is then combined with vision from competitors who have tackled the rally when it featured in the European Rally Championship.  

“Luckily, the event has been part of the European Rally Championship, so there are some similar stages, so we can have some footage from Rally TV, which helps the team and the drivers prepare for the event,” said Wydaeghe..

“This is one of my first tasks as a co-driver to make these comparisons stage by stage. Then the next step will be to analyse the road book and the maps and to get some idea of the roads without going there.

"Therefore, we use Google maps and then Google Earth to start to memorise a little bit the roads without being on the island. This is so when we arrive there we don’t need to drive the whole island to get familiar with it. This will help us on the recce to find our way.

Hyundai Motorsport

“Of course if you have done the event before it is much more easy, now we are just guessing. Until now we still don’t know a great deal. Will the tarmac be abrasive and how it will be in the wet, these are all things you try to get some information from drivers that have been there in then ERC.

"I was chatting with a lot of guys that had been there and none of them is giving us the same answer. We have heard everything and we will figure it out when we are there during the recce.”

Once that has been completed Wydaeghe will then analyse stage summaries produced by Neuville. This video analysis will be the main focus for Wydaeghe which is the biggest difference compared to preparing for a rally that he has previously competed.  

“For Canary Islands we have no pace notes, so I think Thierry will make small stage descriptions from the onboards. We have this so we know what is coming up in the recce so it is not a complete surprise for us,” he added.

“To put an amount of hours I don’t know but you can say for three or four weeks every day you are busy with that. It is not a full-time job like eight hours a day but still I would say three or four hours day you are doing preparations.

"It is a lot of work and some rallies are more difficult to prepare for than others, but it is not that a new event requires more preparation time.”

The meticulous pre-event preparation will be put to the test this week when crews complete the recce run through the stages this week, before the rally begin on Friday. But rest assured pace notes will be one of the critical factors in deciding who will prevail on the Canary Islands. 

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