Bristol rally driver dream comes true

After more than 30 years of trying, a rally car driver from Bristol has won his first race.

Richard Baker, the owner of Five Stokes Garage on North Road, Stoke Gifford, says that he "eats, drinks and sleeps" rally cars and it is a dream come true to finally register a win.

Mr Baker won the two-litre class at a South West Rally Championship event in Swindon in his bright orange 1976 Ford Escort Mk II. The car has a 280hp engine and a six-speed sequential gearbox, which he has taken two years to build and then fine tune.

This season, Mr Baker and friend and navigator David Porter, a construction engineer, also from Stoke Gifford, have consistently placed well, but it was not until the race in Swindon that they tasted victory for the first time.

"This has been an exceptional season, but it has been a lot of hard work," said Mr Baker, 53. "We had two years of trying and trying with this car but with no success.

"It got to the stage when I put the car up for sale. I was wasting my time and when I looked at my bank balance I was wasting money, too. I was banging my head against the wall.

"I was about to pack it all in, but then we got to the bottom of the problem with the car and this season has been exceptional. We had our first top-10 in January and we have always been in the top-three since then."

In rally driving, the winner is the car which completes two circuits of the course in the fastest time. Before the second leg in Swindon, Mr Baker had three seconds to make up on the car in first place. He eventually won by three seconds.

"Considering I had started racing when I was 18, so that's more than three decades of trying, it was quite an achievement to win. All my life I have always wanted to win, and now I have done it."

Mr Baker has devoted his life to rally driving. Much of the work done at his garage is building and mending rally cars, and he spends every weekend away from home at races.

But he has a surprising confession to make: "I don't like racing. I hate it. I don't know why I do it. Building the car I love, but when the weekend comes up I don't want to go because of the nerves. There's always that element of smashing the car, and yourself, up.

"But I get such an adrenalin rush and at the end of the day, it's well worthwhile, especially if you win."