From co-driving for Ari Vatanen to his decades of motorsport campaigns with Prodrive, David Richards talks about his past, present and future in the world of cars -
. ‘I reckon my life is split into four eras. The first was my education and teenage years. Then I had the competition years with Ari. Then I had the years of building the business, running our teams and things like that. Now I’m about to go into the next era, which I’m still trying to define for myself at the moment.’
Still very much at the heart of things, Richards clearly relishes his role as Prodrive chairman. At the time of our visit he’s buzzing about Dakar, which Prodrive entered for the first time this year with its all-new. ‘Dakar is the Everest of motorsport,’ says Richards. ‘Ari wanted me to do it many times years ago, but I never really fancied it, if I’m honest with you.
So there was always a drop or two of petrol in Richards’ blood, but where did the love affair with motorsport begin? A true Welshman, it could only be road rallying: ‘I think everyone wants to drive, but some of us realise at an early stage we’re not good enough to be at a top level. I did a number of rallies at the local motor club, but I couldn’t really afford to do it so the car was always breaking.
The rest really is history, with Richards setting up his own motorsport consultancy, co-driving with Tony Pond in the factory British Leyland team, running Fiat’s rally efforts in the UK, securing that sponsorship for Ari Vatanen and winning the World Championship. Come the mid-’80s Richards was instrumental in a deal that introduced Rothmans to, the offshoot of the Group C programme being the Porsche Rothmans Rally Team running the unicorn 911 SC RS for drivers such as Henri Toivonen.
Though he was focused on building the Prodrive empire, Richards never lost his love of interesting road cars and leveraged his various affiliations to run some very cool daily drivers over the years, as he explains: ‘I had a Mini for quite a while. I couldn’t afford a Cooper or
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