Living a motorsport dream

Stephen Barker is living every young racer’s dream job: a year working in the heart of a factory rally team at the forefront of the World Rally Championship.

Takapuna-born Barker is nearing the end of a 12 month stint at the M-Sport operation in Cumbria in the United Kingdom.

Run by Brit Malcolm Wilson – himself an accomplished rally man of years past – the company is Ford’s official representative in the World Rally Championship, responsible for running the Fiesta WRC cars of Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala and a raft of semi-works and customer cars at world rally championship level.

Stephen Barker admits there are mornings when he can’t quite believe his luck. A rally fan since the age of 12 when he was first taken for a ride by family friend Ian Attwood, he has rallied in the Extreme series here in New Zealand – becoming the first to run a Ford Focus in rallying in this country – and even helped the Ford WRC team when it came to New Zealand for the local round of the world championship.

In 2009, he won the Rally New Zealand Rising Stars shootout, scoring a funded season in a Fiesta ST the following year and winning the class. He was first two-wheel-drive competitor home in the 2010 event.

Along with his first national title came a chance to compete in the international Fiesta competition in Cumbria, a contest he says was quite similar to the New Zealand one “except here the judges were Malcolm Wilson and current WRC drivers Mikko Hirvonen and Matthew Wilson!”

Victory in the shootout brought his current reward, and in February 2011 he moved to Cumbria to work with M-Sport for a full year in a paid role that has taken him to all the European rounds of the WRC working with guests of the team. Many of these are VIPs from the team’s current and past sponsors, including Castrol and BP.

Stephen was there when the M-Sport team celebrated an historic 1-2-3 result at this year’s Wales Rally GB, with Jari-Matti Latvala in the factory Castrol-backed car leading home the M-Sport customer cars of Mads Østberg and Henning Solberg.

He also won a test in the M-Sport developed Ford Fiesta S2000 championship rally car with tuition from Matthew Wilson, an experience he described as “amazing”.

His work there has included helping to build 24 WRC cars for the team, running rally stage tours for VIPs and helping to host guests at the WRC service parks.

He has also been picked to help with driving duties at the company’s hosted drive days, using Ford’s Fiesta R2 and helping to develop the new Fiesta MS1. Stephen was the first to drive the MS1 on a rally, when it was the “zero” or safety car on the popular Grizedale Stages rally in late November.

So what next? Stephen has an ambitious plan that leads ultimately to a WRC drive, starting with his current efforts to put together sponsors and support for a season in a Fiesta R2 contesting the British Rally Championship.

The BRC is this year open exclusively to two wheel drive cars, and Stephen rates his chances of taking the championship as “very good”. If he does so he will be the only New Zealander to ever take a northern hemisphere rally title. Then he’s hoping to take out the WRC Academy championship, won this year by Irishman Craig Breen in an M-Sport Fiesta.

From there, this quick young Kiwi will have his eyes on the World Rally Championship.