An Interview with 2025 ERC Runner-Up Jon Armstrong
It’s 11 am on the first day of the Voly Grampian Forest Rally 2025, part of the British Rally Championship calendar. Jon Armstrong joins me from the driver’s seat of his vRS Skoda to get me up to scratch in what it means to be a professional rally driver in the modern era of motorsport. A surprise appearance from his partner and fellow SLICKS contributor, Hollie McRae, daughter of Colin McRae, sets off proceedings.
L: Jon, mate. Great to sit down with you. How are things?
J: Good, keeping busy. The rally stuff, the usual. But working slightly more freelance this year, too, so it’s a bit different. Nice to explore different parts of your career, though. I’m trying out some coaching.
L: Talk me through that. In-person? On the sim?
J: I’ve always been interested in that side of rally, helping people and whatnot. The more you progress, the more people want to know how you do things, and they respect your experiences and how you can help them. So, basically, I go to test with people and analyse their driving from on-board footage, as well as sitting beside them in the passenger seat. Sometimes the best feeling you get from a car is the one through your arse. I also do online bits, reviewing the footage and giving feedback on where they can be faster. It’s new for me, I’m just finding my feet, but it’s exciting and incredibly rewarding, especially when you can see the noticeable improvements in the next session.
L: How are you as a passenger? Suppose this gives you a taste of what Shane [Byrne] feels as your co-driver.
J: It’s tricky because everything feels faster in the passenger seat. You can’t anticipate the breaking or how much speed the car can carry around a corner as accurately as when you’re the driver. It’s a lot more intense as a passenger, let’s say that. It can be enjoyable when the driver has a good level of car control, and you can feel comfortable. But, for sure, you always feel a bit nervous, I think that’s normal. I tend to lean towards virtual coaching mostly.
L: Do you get all the data as well as the footage?
J: Sometimes, yeah. It’s great when you get the telemetry, because you can see what they’re doing with the pedals: brake pressure and throttle percentage and things like that. It can be as useful as sitting directly next to them, sometimes more.
L: Do you communicate with them while they’re driving like a co-driver, or are you just observing?
J: It depends on the driver. Some drivers can lose their concentration, so I tend to save feedback until the end. Everyone has their own coaching style.
L: Is it normal to have a coach, or is it becoming more common?
J: Not everyone has one. It depends on your situation. Oliver Solberg or Kalle Rovanperä, whose dads were WRC drivers, have given them a head start in terms of access to trainers, coaches and so on. Plus, they were both in a car by age four or something crazy like that. A lot of us have to learn for ourselves through trial and error, as well as using whatever we can get our hands on. Other drivers’ on-board videos are handy, if you can get hold of them.
L: Budgets are a big factor, I can imagine.
J: 100%. It’s another expense that a lot of people can justify avoiding. Compared to buying 6-7 tyres per rally, which are kind of important, the thought of spending more on a coach isn’t very appealing.
L: What were your beginnings like in rally?
J: My dad was interested in rallying. My brother is 10 years older and he was involved in rallying too. Naturally, I’d go to rallies to spectate. My dad was a mechanic by day and a rally mechanic by night, working on cars with his friends. My dad did a bit of amateur co-driving, too. From the age of six, I was on the PlayStation playing Colin McRae Rally, which gave such an authentic feeling of being a driver. As a teenager, I’d take old cars that failed their MOT into my uncle’s farm and use them as pretend rally cars.
L: What was your first rally car?
J: I think it was a Ford Escort or a Citroën AX. We used to call them ‘bangers’. Then I ended up in a Corsa B, which was my first car for rally sprints, which is where my competing started. There was a championship in Ireland, open to 12-17-year-olds, similar to Junior 1000s today. As long as you had a roll cage, bucket seats and a seatbelt, you didn’t need a licence and you could enter. That’s where I cut my teeth on the competitive side of things.
L: What came next?
J: It just snowballed from there. We were never in a position where we could be too comfortable, as we needed to pay the next entry fee or car repairs. We always went rally by rally.
L: How does it work in modern rally with choosing your car? How did you end up with a Ford Fiesta and not a Škoda Fabia or a Toyota Yaris?
J: It’s sponsorships and deals and opportunities. I’ve mostly been in Fords. I’ve always gravitated towards M-Sport. Malcolm Wilson produces cars for Rally2 and WRC, and the Polish division of that championship is in Krakow, Poland, and they build the front-wheel-drive M-Sport car, which is for Rally4 and Rally3 and a lot more achievable to get into. I did three seasons in the Junior WRC, which is run by M-Sport Poland. In that series, each driver pays the fee to do each rally and you have to use their cars. I was runner-up two years in a row and 2023 wasn’t looking too promising for a drive. If you want to compete, you either need a team that wants you in a car or you need to bring sponsor money or your personal wealth. I didn’t know what I was going to do. The boss of M-Sport Poland, Maciej Woda, let me drive his car in the European Championship. I ended up winning the whole championship that year in Rally3. They gave me a lot of support and helped with the running costs. I’m a factory driver, but a paying factory driver, in the sense that I still bring my own sponsors from Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy and so on. John Coyne, an Irish businessman living in America, has retired and now spends his legacy supporting Irish drivers, which is really nice.
L: We’ve touched on sim racing a bit already. But tell me a bit more about it. From my experience, Richard Burns Rally is still the gold standard for replicating the feel of a car, but that game is nearly 30 years old. Do you rely on it?
J: I’ve been playing racing games from a very young age, but I started on a controller. They were never too realistic at the time, but you could still train muscle memory and stuff. When I tried Richard Burns, it was the first time I felt like rally was difficult. Progression wasn’t easy, but it was rewarding due to how tricky it was. A casual racing audience wouldn’t enjoy Richard Burns Rally, but that’s what makes it special for that small percentage of pro racers. A lot of people will never afford to go rallying in real life, so these games are as close as most will get.
L: Last thing, Jon. Goodwood Festival of Speed looked incredible this year. You got to drive Colin’s championship-winning car!
J: I was going there with Hollie and her family, but I didn’t know I’d be driving the car until a couple of weeks before. I’d never been to Goodwood for a full weekend, so I was just excited to be there and check out the rally stage through the woods. Hollie’s mum mentioned that I wasn’t set to drive anything that weekend, so she suggested I take L555 BAT [Colin’s car] up the hillclimb. I was so scared. What I didn’t know until the morning of the run was that Hollie was going to be sitting next to me in the co-driver's seat. It was such a special feeling.
L: Jon, thanks for your time, mate. All the best for the rest of the season.
J: Barum in Czechia, Wales and then Croatia to finish. Thanks!
Jon Armstrong won the ERC Croatia Rally 2025 on the final stage and clinched 2nd overall in the 2025 ERC Championship.
