Driven to succeed

How does a petrolhead from Sligo and an equine enthusiast from Kilmaine become the top rally team in Mayo? Husband and wife John Warren and Ruthann O’Connor spend more time in each other’s company than any other rally team in the country.

Between working together in research and development with McHales, racing their famous ‘Green Machine’ and living together by the shores of Lough Carra, the two are rarely apart.

They’re as easy going as it comes. But then again, they’d want to be for a sport like this. Because if you think you know what’s involved in rallying, you have no idea.

We certainly didn’t when The Mayo News first laid eyes on the famous green Toyota Twin-Cam parked outside John and Ruthann’s Brownstown home.

Sitting in one of these yokes for the first time is quite an experience. Clambering through the roll cage into a cavernous but cosy bucket seat is the first challenge.

You then constrict yourself with not one, but six safety belts - throw in a helmet strapped to the roof and big fire retardant overalls on race day.

The interior is totally different to your normal car. There is no fabric, no cup holder, no sound system and the piping you’d normally see on the inside is totally exposed inside this mini-rocket ship.

There’s so many buttons, knobs, levers and switches that you literally don’t know where to look. We didn’t fancy bringing her for a spin. Instead, we got to see her in action on John and Ruthann’s television screen. We watch just over two minutes of in-car race footage stored on 40-odd USB drives that they have spent entire evenings re-watching and analysing.

Even from the safety of a sitting room, it’s almost nauseating to see what these machines can do. Watching them swerve, throttle, slide and dodge their way through grass-laden boithríns with furious panache makes it easy to see why they have won so many competitions. What’s harder to figure out is the appeal of such a costly, time-consuming and, seemingly, dangerous, hobby.

“It’s the safety gear. I feel safer driving down a country lane at one-hundred miles an hour in this car than sixty-miles an hour in a road car, genuinely,” John, a native of Grange, tells The Mayo News.

“It is just amazing the crashes that people can have and walk away from them without a scratch, time and time again. Every day, there is huge smashes and people just walk away.”

Though John was always mad-interested in cars, Ruthann had ‘absolutely none’ before they met through work. Prior to this, John’s only foray into motorsport was stock car racing, ‘a poor man’s version of Nascar.’

But it was Ruthann, ironically, that encouraged him to go into rallying one day while the pair were spectating at a stock car event in 2011.

“He was interested in getting into it and he did know how,” says Ruthann, a life-long horse lover who still keeps a few steeds near her house.

“So I said ‘Why don’t you give it a go and then we’ll see.” John then got the loan of a car which burned rubber in a few sprint events.

“We went, we watched a few rallies. I said, ‘It looks pretty fun’,” continues Ruthann, who still had ‘no plan of getting involved’. It was at one such rally where, at Ruth’s prompting, they met a man with a twin-cam who offered to sell it to them.

They parted with about €4,000 initially for a machine that first hit the road in Galway city back in the 1980. Getting the necessary fireproof gear brought them to over €5,000 - still small money in rallying terms.

There was just one problem. “He went home saying ‘Oh God, what have I done?’ He said, ‘Well, where will I get a navigator?’ I said, ‘I’m sure you’ll find one somewhere’.” He did, eventually.

“I sat in with him, I think it was the following week we did a sprint in Tipperary and I had no problem. I actually enjoyed it and I would have been very very calm,” explains Ruthann.

Despite still being ‘completely green’, John and Ruthann made their rallying debut at an event in Cavan in 2011. Thirteen years on, they compete in the McHale Fusion 4 Plus Fiesta R5. But their first spin in the little green twin-cam sitting proudly outside their front door is one they’ll never forget.

“I had no idea how much I would enjoy it until I actually did it,” says John. “The adrenaline rush that you get out of it, it probably lasts for about two or three days afterwards. It’s like a drug! Not that I know what drugs are like, but it feels like that.”

Not only are they unique in being the only husband and wife team on the Irish rally circuit, John is unique in consistently using the same navigator at every race. Chatting to them over tea in their sitting room, there’s clearly a chemistry between them, even down to the way they finish each other’s sentences.

So how does spending that length of time in his navigator’s company affect them when the rubber meets the road?

“I think it’s a huge benefit, to be honest with you,” he says. “I suppose if I feel something’s not right or vice-versa there’s no problem to say it, whereas if I had somebody else navigating for me that I didn’t know so well, or I wasn’t happy with what they were doing, you might be a little bit more cautious about broaching that. We speak our minds to each other.”

Although female participation in motorsport is still ‘pretty rare’, Ruthann has gone from being the only woman in a room full of fellas to being among a handful in her 13 years in the passenger’s seat.

“There’s definitely more and more girls every day out. Quite a lot of them would come to me asking how do you get into it.”

In all that time, she hasn’t gotten as much as a smart comment or a dirty look from anyone. Because rallying is a tight-knit volunteer-driven community, where people ‘will literally take parts out of their own car to get you going.’

Regardless, her outlook on life and rallying have been quite similar for many years.

“To me, life is short and just live while you’re alive. Just do these things, don’t ponder it,” she says

“My Dad died young and that probably changed my perspective on a lot of things, just seeing how suddenly his health deteriorated and how he had a tough battle of it. That would have made me very much [say], ‘Live while you’re alive’.”

Amazing how far a little green twin-cam and a supportive spouse will get you.