Prodrive at 30: From the WRC to Mars

David Richards' telephone is ringing. It's March, 1989 and two worlds are about to collide; a legend about to be born.

It's no surprise that Richards remembers that first call from Ryuichiro Kuze, the founding president of Subaru's Tecnica International division. That was the deal that turned Prodrive into a world-beater.

There was, of course, Prodrive before Subaru and David Richards Autosport before Prodrive. But, 30 years ago, Richards opened the doors and started trading under a name that would go on to take six World Rally Championship titles, enjoy success at Le Mans and now help put machinery on Mars.

As early as 1976, Richards had established his own motorsport business. Co-driving remained at the centre of what he wanted to do, but when the ultimate goal was achieved alongside Ari Vatanen in 1981, Richards knew in an instant that was the right time to stop. The right time to focus on the business. He was 29.

"The commercial side of the sport was always far more interesting to me," says Richards. "Ari still jokes with me today that we'd be driving along and I would be giving him a steady stream of business ideas: 'We could build this, sell that...' It was a constant for me."

Richards had made a good contact with Rothmans (the backer of the David Sutton-tuned Escort he and Vatanen won their WRC title in) and he then helped with the cigarette company's backing of Porsche's endurance programme and March's F1 effort.

In 1984, he took both Porsche and Rothmans in a different direction - to the Middle East Rally Championship and Saeed Al-Hajri. And Prodrive and the Qatari celebrated a title in its first year of business.

Vatanen and Richards won the 1981 WRC title together © LAT

For the next two years, Prodrive was based out of a unit at Silverstone, before moving to its current home in 1986. At that time, the M40 wasn't thundering past the windows, but planning for the road was well underway and Richards was only too well aware of the transport benefits this would provide. The motorway finally opened in 1991 and the Prodrive building would soon become a landmark on any trip past junction 11.

And it wasn't like you could miss it. By design, Richards wanted it facing out to the motorway and the watching world rather than facing into the rest of the business park development on the outskirts of the town. And he wanted it white. There were some council quarrels about this, but it went up white and it's stayed that way since.

The first thing to come out of the new premises was a Rothmans-liveried Metro 6R4, which would be driven by Jimmy McRae in 1986. That was a straight commercial deal, the team bought the car and ran it.

That wasn't really what DR was after, he wanted a manufacturer link. An agreement with BMW to run M3s a year later provided just that opportunity. And Prodrive's building suddenly reflected that new allegiance to Munich. Have a look at the floor in the original building, now used as the heritage centre, and you'll see the tiles are dark red - the same colour as those used in BMW dealerships at the time. There was no Prodrive identity on the side of the building and the BMW flags flew high outside.

"The BMW deal gave us scale," says Richards, "and helped us build that relationship with the manufacturer. At the time we were probably the most prolific builders of M3s - a car that had been designed for circuit racing, but we were taking rallying. This was when things really took off for Prodrive. Before then it had been a couple of Porsches here, a Metro there."

Bernard Beguin gave Prodrive its first ever World Rally Championship event win on the 1987 Tour of Corsica. Group B had, of course, been and gone, but it had left its mark in terms of traction. Four-wheel drive was an absolute must to succeed on the stages. And it wouldn't be long before Kuze-san reached for the phone having watched Vatanen fling a Prodrive M3 through the 1000 Lakes in 1988.

By then, Prodrive had branched out and taken the M3 to the track.

Prodrive's workshop in the height of the BMW touring car

"We had a lot of spare parts sitting around from building the rally cars," Richards remembers, "and we had a call from Frank Sytner. He wanted to go racing and asked if we could build him a car. Richard Taylor, who worked for Frank, came and had a look at our place and the rest is history."

Taylor moved to Prodrive and remains with the firm today. And Sytner won the 1988 British Touring Car title. Touring cars remained close to the heart of the business and the firm went on to build and run racecars for Alfa Romeo, Honda and Ford. The direction BTCC has taken has since precluded Prodrive involvement.

"We were right in there in the heyday of British Touring Cars," says Richards, "but it's not viable for us anymore. We're not a company that takes a manufacturers' car and goes racing - we have too many resources here for that. The objective here is to start right from the very beginning to build the car for that race programme. The obvious example is Aston Martin..."

That'll come. For now, back to the phonecall.

"Mr Kuze was on his way to the Safari Rally," says Richards. "He said he wanted to come and talk to us about Subaru going to rallying or racing.

"As soon as he was off the phone, we began researching Subaru - we really didn't know an awful lot about the company at the time. We met Mr Kuze, he said he would like to see our plan in writing, so we had a proposal on his desk by the time he got back to Japan and we had an agreement."

Kuze was a huge fan of the programme and the relationship he built with Prodrive remains close to DR's heart.

"He became one of my favourite people of all time," says Richards. "It was the trust in the relationship we built up over a period. He would just let me get on with things at my end while he would deal with all the politics back in Japan and, of course, raising the budget.

Colin McRae in action on the 1992 RAC Rally, during the Subaru programme's formative years © LAT

"There was a big cultural divide, but when you have somebody who could empathise, it made it so much easier."

The Legacy RS was an immediate hit and Markku Alen led the 1990 Acropolis Rally, the car's World Rally Championship debut.

The Subaru alliance took Prodrive into another world and up against the WRC's giants. Budget-wise, they couldn't compete with the likes of Lancia or Toyota, but this smaller-scale, tightly focused operation would ultimately pay dividends, even if it did take slightly longer than expected for the Legacy to become a winner.

Richards encouraged people to look at things differently. Prodrive wasn't about to conform to motorsport's preconceptions - the mechanics will bear testament to this in their pink overalls. That the colour is known as 'rubine red' and is seen as a masculine shade in Japan would come as little comfort.

Free from the restrictions of working directly for a manufacturer Prodrive enjoyed a degree of autonomy with the programme, allowing Richards to take a punt on a rapid Scot called Colin. He might have bent some metal along the way, but it was McRae who ultimately realised the global ambition of Prodrive and Subaru.

In 1995, Subaru won both the drivers' and manufacturers' championships. Eleven years in and the world was beaten.

"The Subaru years were a very important part of the business," says Richards. "In everything in life, people look back and say there are pivotal times that influence everything around them. Everything coincided for us then, the business was mature and we had confidence, experience and enthusiasm. This all happened at the right time and the results followed."

Richards admits that winning world titles as team principal means more to him than his own award of 14 years previous.

The crowning moment for McRae, Prodrive and Subaru in Chester in 1995 © LAT

"In 1995, I was part of a team effort and I'd put that team together and that was quite extraordinary," he says. "That moment in Chester was very special."

Further titles would follow with Richard Burns and Petter Solberg both joining McRae as world champions with Subaru.

Prodrive was expanding quickly by this point and racing was never far away. A Lukoil deal meant a stake in Christian Horner's Arden International Formula 3000 team for 1999. But the big deal for 1999 was with venture capitalist firm Apax.

Forty-nine per cent of Prodrive was sold to them, generating the cash for Richards to buy International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC), Bernie Ecclestone's WRC rights holding firm. Richards set out to transform the WRC for a new media age. And got a long way down the road before selling ISC in 2007.

In that time, Subaru's fortunes went downhill and the manufacturer pulled out of rallying at the end of the 2008 season.

Prodrive switched its focus to endurance racing. Having shown what it could do with a private Ferrari 550 GTS Maranello programme between 2001 and 2004 an association with Aston Martin was formed and remains today.

The DBR9 GT1 enjoyed a sensational debut win in the 2005 Sebring 12 Hours, and more than 200 racecars have since been built for the factory team and customer use.

The Prodrive Aston Martin programme gets started in Sebring testing in 1995 © LAT

The business model was different for Aston; Prodrive developed the car and then used the manufacturer's marketing prowess to generate commercial support to run it.

"Demonstrably," says Richards, "this worked for Aston Martin and we believed there was a commercial case for Mini."

Instead, Prodrive ended up developing a world-class rally car with pretty much zero support from BMW. Inevitable bickering became a rancorous divorce.

"We developed a world championship-winning car," says Richards, "and it cost us many millions of pounds. Us. Not BMW."

While the Mini episode cost Prodrive dearly, Richards is not a man known for looking back. He talks in terms of lessons learned. And those lessons will be put to good use as Prodrive moves into its Thirties.

The Aston endurance effort now underpins the motorsport activity at Prodrive, but Dakar is beckoning in 2016 and there is, DR assures us, a further big deal looming on the horizon. But for a man formerly at the peak of the WRC, Formula 1 (with BAR) and touring cars, it must be pretty quiet right now?

"We have diversified," cedes Richards. "People who follow us in AUTOSPORT might be thinking that Prodrive's not doing as much as we were, but they forget we've got a team of people at our composites workshop in Milton Keynes working on the Mars Exploration Rover that will be in space in three years' time. And we're working on very advanced road car projects for a number of manufacturers."

The Mini WRC project proved frustrating © LAT

That motorsport now represents just 30 per cent of the group turnover comes is a harsh reality of the economic present.

"The motorsport world is far more frugal and cautious these days," Richards explains. "The budgets we had access to 10, 20 years ago simply aren't there any more and that's why the other activities around Prodrive have grown so much."

But it's not why Richards has become a Cornish hotelier. DR's renovation of a St Mawes hotel was the surprise story a couple of years ago.

"That's the challenge," he says, "something completely different."

Talking of completely different, junction 11 soon won't be the same as Prodrive makes way for Primark on a new retail site. Prodrive moves half a mile up the road to a new purpose-built factory, taking a whole lot of heritage with it. Will DR shed a tear?

"I'm sure it will be an emotional day," he says, "but we're looking to the future and what it holds for us... maybe a Dakar win?"

And so starts the next 30 years.

RICHARDS AND F1

When Flavio Briatore departed Benetton in 1997, David Richards was drafted in to guide a brace of B198s driven by Alex Wurz and Giancarlo Fisichella. It wasn't a deal that would last. Unable to agree on the way forward, Richards left the team one year later.

But his F1 fire was burning bright and a deal was struck for Prodrive to take over the running of the BAR team post-Craig Pollock in 2001.

DR was back in the pitlane. And this time he stayed and made it stick, turning around a well-funded but desperately underachieving outfit into the runners-up in the 2004 constructors' championship. Then Honda came and Prodrive's F1 time was served.

Prodrive entered and subsequently withdrew from F1 in the 2008 season. The firm's last attempt to enter came in 2010, when it missed out to Lotus Racing, Virgin Racing and HRT.

Clearly, motorsport's pinnacle isn't far from DR's thoughts.

Richards' BAR tenure included the highly promising 2004 season © LAT

"Second in the constructors' championship in 2004 is not enough," says Richards. "The business of motor racing is about winning. Every year, we have a review of every strand of motorsport including F1, but we are a commercial business and the business is run on that basis, not for the love of it or for our hearts and minds."

An F1 return for Prodrive is unlikely, but a Benetton-style return for Richards himself is possible - were the right job to come along.

"If I were asked back, it would depend on a number of aspects, it wouldn't be a black-and-white decision," he says. "It would depend on the circumstances around me here at the time and my obligations to other people, not least my family.

"The one thing I do know about doing F1 is that it requires more than 100 per cent commitment.

"I've always said that the people leading F1 are the same people who would have been leading the crusades in the Middle Ages - they disappear off for nine months and you don't see them again and they don't have time for anything else in that nine months.

"You have to be that single-minded and whether I'd be prepared to do that these days, I'm not sure. It would depend therefore on what the opportunity was and what I felt I could achieve."