Grist Remembers First World Rally Championship Win – 25 Years After Victory On The 1993 Rally Of Argentina

By Paul Evans

It’s 25 years since Nicky Grist won his first FIA World Rally Championship event – co-driving for Juha Kankkunen on the 1993 Rally of Argentina in a Castrol Toyota Team Celica GT-Four ST185.

The Ebbw Vale-born co-driver was drafted in at short notice when the Finnish driver’s regular navigator, Juha Piironen, suffered a brain haemorrhage at the team hotel in Villa Carlos Paz before the start.

Grist was co-driving for German pilot Armin Schwarz in a Mitsubishi at the time, but with a limited WRC programme they released him from his contract to join Kankkunen for, initially, two events – Argentina and New Zealand.

Grist said cheerio to his very understanding wife with a hug and a “see you in seven weeks” and off he shot to the Southern Hemisphere – flying trans-Atlantic in First Class being one of the perks of navigating for a multiple world champion!

Twenty-four hours after leaving home, Grist arrived at the team hotel to be greeted by Kankkunen and a pile of maps and road books. The recce had started, and there was no time to waste – he was straight back out the door and on the way to the stages.

“A mechanic picked me up from Cordoba airport and takes me to the team hotel in Villa Carlos Paz,” recalls Grist. “Kankkunen was sitting there with an ashtray full of little cigarillos, masses of empty coffee cups, a mountain of rally paperwork and he says to me ‘right, let’s go.’ I dumped my bags in my room and we were into the car and off on the recce.

“We were a bit tight on time, but we managed to recce every stage twice. Fortunately, Juha’s pacenote system was quite easy because it was in English and it was descriptive – similar to how I read a map in the lanes when I started road rallying, so I fell straight into it.

“After the recce we we had to fly four hundred kilometres north for the ceremonial start in the district of Tucumán, and then into the opening super special stage. We blasted around that, in front of thousands of people, and we were fastest! ‘Oh my God, I’m leading my first World Championship event! Wow!’ From that moment on, we went right through that rally and we never lost the lead.

“But at the start of the last day, we were leaving the hotel in Carlos Paz and going back to Cordoba, where the rally cars were parked overnight. The rental cars in Argentina back then were the worst cars you’d ever seen in your life, and we had one of those horrible old Renault 9 saloons. The team manager, George Donaldson, was driving. Juha was in the front and our team-mate Didier Auriol, his co-driver Bernard Occelli, and I were sat in the back. It was something like six o’clock in the morning and the roads were deserted. We’re driving up this hill and all of a sudden this car starts chugging. Badly.

“We’re chugging along, it’s getting worse, and I look at the petrol gauge and say, ‘George, there’s no petrol in this car!’ He said not to worry, and that there is at least twenty kilometres left in the tank. I said ‘twenty kilometres, it’s sixteen kilometres to the start and the gauge is already on empty – let’s turn around and get another vehicle.’

“Juha says, ‘don’t worry, it’ll be okay boyo.’ Didier chirps up and says ‘it’ll be fine’ – neither of them are very convincing, and we keep chugging along and as you can imagine I’m now on tender hooks. I’m leading my first World Championship rally, we’re going to the start of the last day and I’m in a car that’s about to run out of petrol, without another soul in sight!

“Eventually we get there, get out of the car and I think ‘thank God for that.’ Everyone’s having a good laugh and a joke, at what feels like my expense. Juha comes over and puts his arm around me and says, ‘I told you there was nothing to worry about, didn’t I?’ They then told me that the petrol gauge is broken, and that George had kept the car topped up with fuel for the last four days, it’s got a full tank. What he’d been doing was blipping the throttle to wind me up!

“But we went on and, low and behold, I won by first World Championship rally. I just couldn’t believe it.”

Grist and Kankkunen went on to contested 31 WRC events together between 1993-’96, winning four (including Rally GB in 1993 – ‘this one’s for you boyo’ said Kankkunen) and finishing on the podium 17 times. They will be reunited in October as Dayinsure Wales Rally GB Legends, in celebration of that 1993 Rally GB victory, which is regarded as the toughest conditions ever faced by crews on Britain’s round of the WRC. They will be travelling around the rally visiting various locations and both driving Grist’s Celica around the last stage (Great Orme in Llandudno) to finish of their week long visit.

Grist won a lot more WRC events during his career, 21 in fact – 17 with Colin McRae.

Now retired from regular competition, Grist’s last WRC event was on the 2006 Rally of Turkey with McRae in a Kronos team Citroën Xsara WRC. Now living in Abergavenny, Grist is still very much involved in motorsport and runs Nicky Grist Motorsports – a supplier of top-quality safety equipment.