In 2009, drivers had very limited options when it came to employers. The global financial crisis, which hit hard in 2008, forced Subaru to withdraw from the championship, and soon after, Suzuki followed suit.
This left only two factory teams in the championship, with a total of just four factory drivers: Citroën’s Sébastien Loeb and Dani Sordo, and Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala and Mikko Hirvonen.
It was a challenging situation for drivers who had proven their talent and aimed to compete at the highest level, something Kris Meeke remembers well.
“I was still with Colin [McRae] at that time and I remember him saying, ‘this is it, it’s going to go through a barren patch, there’s going to be no opportunities’ because at that time there were only four factory drivers in the world championship,” Meeke recalled in an interview with Dirtfish.
Meeke had competed in the junior class of the World Rally Championship in the 2006 season but was left without a drive afterwards.
“A guy offered me to do a rally in Ireland in a Renault Clio Super 1600,” Meeke reminisced.
“We managed to set a few fastest times outright against the World Rally Cars, and it raised attention,” he continued.
At that point, Meeke had no idea how significant this moment would be. Renault reached out to the 29-year-old and invited him to compete in Rally Russia, part of the IRC series at the time, in one of their team cars. A new opportunity was now on the horizon, and Meeke’s rally career took off in an unexpected place – a hotel bar.
“The Clio R3 had no ground clearance, the dampers weren’t enough, and the sump burst so the rally was over,” Meeke remembers. “But we were staying in the same hotel as Kronos, who I had fond memories of having worked with Marc Van Dalen back in 2005. He was staying in the same hotel, and we sat at the bar drinking some vodka. And he said to me, ‘I think I might have a plan. I think I could get you into the IRC next year,” Meeke recalled of the ill-fated event in Russia.
That conversation in the hotel bar proved fruitful, and things began to move quickly afterward.
“So he phoned me a week later, and there was a Belgian guy who was head of Peugeot UK marketing, Christian Stein, who subsequently went on to be head of Seat marketing worldwide, and everything came down to him. Between Marc Van Dalen’s relationship with Christian Stein, he sort of joined the dots and a program was born to do the IRC in 2009,” Meeke said.
According to Meeke, the IRC concept worked brilliantly, and it’s a model that could still be relevant today.
“They created a concept which I believe to this day is the way to create a world championship,” Meeke reflected.
“Manufacturers would produce a car, develop it, spend the money developing it, and then it’s up to the regional importers to run the program,” he added.
Meeke highlighted the many benefits of the concept.
“And that really created a nationalistic thing. Everyone was in equal machinery as regards, you know, like Peugeot Belgium, Peugeot France, Peugeot Portugal, Peugeot Spain, Peugeot UK got involved, Peugeot Italy got involved. And the local importer could run a car,” Meeke continued.
In the IRC series, Meeke and his co-driver Paul Nagle achieved significant victories during the season. The duo won events such as the Ypres Rally in Belgium, and the highlight of the season came at Rally Sanremo, where Meeke secured the championship title.
In Sanremo, emotions ran high for Meeke. The championship was decided exactly nine years to the day after his mother’s death.
“It was probably one of the most important days of my career,” Meeke said.
“It was one of my days where the stars aligned”.
Success in the IRC series opened doors for Meeke in the World Rally Championship, and the rest is a remarkable piece of rally history. Meeke became a top-level driver, winning events such as Rally Finland in 2016.
