The rally co-driver Verstappen can thank for his Brazil win

As Max Verstappen crossed the line in Brazil for his third Formula 1 win of the year - the biggest haul in any of his five seasons in the championship - his mind must have been racing through a list of people to thank for his latest success. You'd be forgiven for thinking that quite low on that list would be a rally co-driver from Yorkshire...

However, when Joe Sturdy (pictured below, right) isn't guiding screaming Ford Escort Mk2s through bleak Welsh forests, he's Verstappen's systems engineer. Put simply, if the Honda engine in Verstappen's Red Bull goes wrong, it's Sturdy's job to fix.

Born to rally competitors Ken (pictured below, left) and Jane, Sturdy was destined for motorsport from the beginning. While Verstappen's rise to F1 was truly remarkable at the age of 17, in a similar fashion Sturdy has quickly climbed the ladder in F1 engineering and is just 28.

He has moved through Force India and Manor (R&D engineer) to Renault (trackside electronics engineer) and finally Honda, where he has the honour of making sure one of Formula 1's most exciting talents finishes a race. Oh, and of course his fellow engineers, mechanics and team members demand he provide all directions to and from the circuit. He occasionally makes a wrong turn and ends up in a bar, but only when the on-track action has finished.

People often forget that Formula 1 isn't just a championship of 20 drivers. It's filled with more than 2000 intriguing, diverse and incredible people who have reached the top of their profession, so it's easy to understand why so many of them also find success, however big or small, outside the championship. Sturdy is part of that high-achieving group.

There are more similarities between co-driving a rally car and 'co-driving' a Red Bull RB15 than you might expect. It's a thankless task. Co-drive a rally car effectively and you've basically done your job correctly - nothing more, nothing less - and then at the end of the rally, journalists make a big song and dance about how the driver won the event and forget about the person in the passenger seat. Sorry Joe!

In F1, it's the same. There are plaudits internally, but Verstappen and his team boss Christian Horner are the ones who draw the big praise, and the 300-plus people at the track and factory have done their jobs, no outside recognition forthcoming for their major roles in any success.

Sturdy likes it that way though.

"One thing I will say is put me in front of the Escort's engine and I'm almost a complete amateur!" Joe Sturdy

"Co-driving is a bit of a thankless task and - in terms of people looking in from the outside - the F1 job is the same," he explains.

"Obviously we get thanked within the team, but often the team members aren't being mentioned when someone like Max wins a race. It's my job to make sure everything is working perfectly, and then if something goes wrong I'm the first person to turn to.

"It's the same with co-driving, I'm expected to deliver the notes perfectly and if I don't and we end up upside down in a field then everyone is asking me what went wrong...

"Being quietly competent - I quite like that part of it. You know whether you've done a good job and if you have you can go home happy. There have been times where somewhere along the way I've made a bit of a mess of it, and you feel it. When a driver wins they get all the credit, but I'm judging my own performance and I think that's more important to me."

This weekend, Sturdy embarks on the toughest task rallying can throw at him. In consecutive weekends he's been to Mexico, straight over to Austin, then to Brazil and now to... Leominster. It's where the gruelling Roger Albert Clark Rally starts and runs through Wales, England and Scotland over four days.

Named after one of Britain's most famous and well-loved rally drivers, the event harks back to rallying's toughest period through the '60s to the '80s, when crews would compete on three hours' sleep and contest hundreds of miles of stages using just maps. This year's RAC Rally promises to be the toughest iteration of the event yet (see preview below).

Sturdy will be co-driving for Nick Carr, the two joined at the hip since winning a sub-category of the top clubman rally championship in the UK, the BTRDA Rally Series. The Rally First category is for under-two-litre bog-standard machinery, and is hotly contested. Sturdy and Carr won the series in 2015 in a Volkswagen Lupo before a season in the British Championship ended with the cash supply running short. An all too familiar story at national level.

The good news is, Carr's rise in the UK is not unlike Sturdy's on the world scene. Having started at a village car dealership, Carr is now responsible for churning out some of the most attention-to-detail-satisfying historic Escorts you've ever seen - and that's big business in rallying, with cars costing north of £100,000 to build properly.

It's also good because Carr maintains his engines. Sturdy can be trusted with one of the most expensive power units on the planet mated to an RB15, but present him with a 2.0-litre BDA motor from the '80s and it's a different story...

"One thing I will say is put me in front of Nick's engine and I'm almost a complete amateur!" adds Sturdy. "The F1 engines are just completely different machines now.

"It's mad how far the engines have come. I pretty much skipped that bit at the start where I should have been fiddling with an engine like in the rally Escorts. I just jumped in at the top end. I'm probably missing the basic skills, but Nick teaches me a lot.

"I probably get involved in that more than most co-drivers, with car set-up stuff, and helping Nick with decisions when he's building and prepping the car.

"The RAC is a massive event. The longest event we've done together so far is about 80 miles, and this is over 300. It's definitely the biggest thing we've ever done. We've probably only done two events in the dark before.

"This is more of an endurance event, the first couple of days will be spent making sure we get round and keeping the car on the road. The conditions - looking at the long-range forecast - it looks like it's going to be really cold, just almost frozen gravel the whole way around, which could be a bit scary.

"Max is now almost at the front of the grid on a regular basis and it's amazing to be part of that. It would be an absolute dream if next year we were championship contenders" Joe Sturdy

"There is a bit more danger being sat in a rally car as opposed to being sat at a desk with a screen in front of me."

The danger in front of the computer screen - where Sturdy relays information to race engineer GianPiero Lambiase - is incurring Verstappen's wrath if the car isn't fixed or just working smoothly.

But Sturdy and Honda have had a brilliant record during the manufacturer's first year with Red Bull this season, proven further by Toro Rosso's second place with Pierre Gasly - who Sturdy engineered at Red Bull for the first half of this season - in Brazil.

Sturdy is no stranger to working with top drivers, and it is that fierce appetite to reach the top, and combine with the best each team has to offer, that has driven Sturdy and Verstappen to their relative positions so early in their careers.

"I used to love working with Nico Hulkenberg, but he was at a completely different stage in his career to what Max is and what I am," says Sturdy, who worked on the Hulkenberg's car last year.

"I feel like I came into F1 at a low level with Manor and Force India. Max was with Toro Rosso at a similar time and I've worked my way up, ending up with Honda and Red Bull at the same time as Max.

"He's now almost at the front of the grid on a regular basis and it's amazing to be part of that. It would be an absolute dream if next year we were championship contenders.

"The drivers, and Christian and Helmut [Marko], are always going around giving out handshakes when we've done well. A lot of the time it's great banter. We have a good relationship with them, and it sounds like the Red Bull-Honda relationship is really strong. The atmosphere in the team is great, the drivers are young and motivated and Alex [Albon] has been a great addition to the team as well."

Of course, you can see the positives and negatives of each job. At Red Bull-Honda, Sturdy gets to work with one of the most innovative and successful F1 teams in recent history, and a manufacturer with incredible history in the championship, while also having to be responsible for the most complex engines F1 has ever seen.

In rally co-driving, a single mistake could send the car off the road and into trees at over 100mph, but the adrenaline of actually being in the car as opposed to "behind a computer screen" is the kind of rush that's difficult to recreate.

So, the golden question - money no object - what's Sturdy doing?

"If there were no financial implications, I think I'd have tried to be a co-driver full-time," he says, after a long pause and a lot of contemplation.

"I started a little bit late, but I feel like if money was no object I would have pursued it. I didn't fancy the few years of not earning any money and maybe not getting anywhere. Also, you could be the best co-driver in the world but if you're not with a good driver, you can spend your whole career underperforming as a team. That shows it's important how well the driver is doing. I couldn't sit with a slow driver, do a good job and be happy at the end of it.

"I'm doing F1 20 times a year. I have a lot of people around me to support me. If I miss anything, there's someone there to help catch me, whereas with the co-driving it's all on me. With me only doing two or three a year, that definitely means I'm a bit more nervous beforehand.

"If you do your job perfectly, that's your job. The only time you get noticed is when you fuck it up. When I'm at work, we're there to support the driver, but it's quite distant from what the driver is doing and the sensations he is feeling in the car.

"You have a computer screen for data, but you're not actually feeling what he's feeling. When we're rallying, I'm supporting Nick and I kind of have control over what's happening, I can see it all play out in front of me."

There's no doubt Sturdy still gets the nerves before an F1 race starts. But it's also his day job, and the rallying provides an adrenaline-filled fun ride where he's sitting in the car next to the driver, feeling every gear change and bump in the road.

But this writer predicts that if Red Bull-Honda can score a title with Verstappen next year, Sturdy's mind will change and the feeling that provides will overtake any experienced in a rally car. And judging by how fiercely competitive Sturdy and Verstappen are, they're both destined for that high one day.

Lupo and Escort pictures courtesy of Kevin Money

RAC Rally preview: Britain's toughest rally set to get underway

Paul Lawrence - Historics Correspondent

The 13th edition of the Roger Albert Clark Rally will be the biggest, toughest and longest yet when the biennial rally starts from Leominster in Herefordshire on Thursday.

The event that celebrates the memory of one of Britain's greatest rally drivers is primarily aimed at historic rally cars from the mid-60s through to the early '80s and is the longest special stage rally on the UK calendar. It is designed to re-live the RAC Rallies of the era.

This year's rally features more days, more stage miles and more competitors within its most competitive field ever.

It is a rallying adventure including long days and nights, stages in legendary forests and a unique atmosphere for crews, service teams, marshals, spectators and officials.

The rally starts in Leominster on Thursday afternoon and crews head straight into two runs over a nine-mile special stage in Radnor Forest in the darkness of Thursday evening. Friday covers classic Welsh stages with another 40 competitive miles on the gravel stages of the Epynt region.

In the late afternoon, the entire rally moves north to Carlisle for three days in the forests of Kielder and the Scottish borders. The rally finally finishes in Carlisle on Monday afternoon.

The pre-event favourites in BDG-engined Ford Escort Mk2s are topped by former winners Marty McCormack/Barney Mitchell (pictured below) and Matthew Robinson/Sam Collis.

Jason Pritchard returns to his Escort Mk2 for another serious crack at winning the rally that his co-driver Phil Clarke won in 2012 with McCormack.

Christophe Jacob and Isabelle Regnier are among the European contenders, along with Swedish ace Arne Backstrom in his potent Volvo 240, while from Belgium is Ghislain de Mevius, son of former WRC driver Gregoire, in his Nissan 240RS.