Guy Wilks was being pushed as the island nation’s next rally star, but through a series of circumstances he never became Britain’s next big name.
In 2004, Wilks fought for a place in the sun alongside another British driver, Kris Meeke (pictured). Wilks was meant to become Petter Solberg’s team-mate at Subaru for the 2005 season. The battle between Wilks and Meeke was vividly described as the “Battle of Britain”.
In the early 2000s, Colin McRae had already disappeared from the rally map and Richard Burns had tragically fallen ill. Wilks was supposed to be the next standard-bearer. Wilks and Meeke were both competing in the WRC junior category at the time.
“We were being billed by the press by this point as the young upstart Burns-McRae battle,” Wilks now recalls in an interview with Dirtfish.
“It was always a good fallback story at that point, you know, who’s got the upper hand between Wilks and Meeke. So it was, I suppose, regular attention,” Wilks continues.
It is now known that the battle ultimately ended in Meeke’s victory. He drove, among others, for Citroën and Toyota and won a total of five WRC rallies.
Wilks had signed an extension with Suzuki from 2005 and was fighting for the junior championship. Everything still looked good towards the end of the season and Wilks felt that he deserved a chance in a top-category Subaru.
“I’ll tell you now, we used to get quite frustrated as junior drivers when we used to hear announcements of drivers that factory teams would take and we’d think, ‘Well, what have they done in the last two or three years?”, Wilks says now.
“You know, they’ve plucked them out of obscurity, put them in a car, whether it was for one event, two events, three events, how come we don’t get a chance?,” Wilks continues.
Wilks has since reflected on the matter and come to the conclusion that he was not even ready for the challenge at that time.
“The obvious thing now, looking back, was that we weren’t necessarily tried and tested, although us being hungry young upstarts and not really giving too much thought for our own preservation if you like, we thought that we were faster, as simple as that,” Wilks says.
“’I know we can go faster than those drivers,’ and that’s not just me – we used to collectively talk,” Wilks continues.
Guy Wilks eventually got his chance in the top category of the World Rally Championship, but was left without any notable success. He ultimately scored only three WRC points in his career. In the IRC series he won one rally, and during his career he also won the British Rally Championship title twice. Wilks feels that he did not push himself hard enough into the top category.
““I was completely naive at that point in my career and if anything a little bit shy of reaching out and approaching the likes of Malcolm [Wilson],” he says.
“If Malcolm bumped into me and had conversation with me of course I’d have conversation and, you know, at points he did ask me a few questions – but never anything formal, you know, just, ‘What are you doing next?’ Obviously all of the top management at that point, they knew what nearly everybody was doing,” he continues.
