Skoda: Shaping UK rallying

So, this is Birmingham. Bourneville, to be precise. It's May, it's snowing and I'm sitting in traffic wondering where I'm going. The reason I don't know is that I've been given the keys to a Skoda and told to drive.

So I did.

The Skoda in question is the firm's all-new city car, the Citigo. And it's nice. It's beautifully presented inside and ours is fitted with the sport kit, which gives us some mean-looking black stripes. And, if you bought two of them, you'd have six cylinders. Only having one, we're left with just the three.

Think Terry Kaby on the 1990 RAC Rally. He won his class by 11 minutes with the same number of cylinders. Granted, he did have a turbocharger. But, sitting behind a P-registration Toyota Corolla and the number 238 bus outside a chocolate factory, a turbocharger's not really much use to us.

A colleague who has clearly done more road tests than me points out that we're driving the car in these conditions and this environment because that's where this kind of car is going spend much of its life. The Citigo will go largely to the City.

Except if it goes to the woods.

Skoda's new city car, the Citigo

There's a good deal of speculation that a rally version of this very motor might emerge from Mlada Boleslav in the not too distant future. Good as this car is between the office blocks, it would be even better between the trees.

But the even better part would be further rally participation from Skoda - and that can only be good news.

Skoda is a long-time supporter of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge and the Fabia S2000 remains unbeaten in both the drivers' and manufacturers' championships since 2009 and, if we're honest, that's not going to change this season either.

So, the Skoda factory in Czech Republic is great. But, for me, Skoda UK is even better.

At the start of last season, Skoda UK Motorsport took a significant amount of stick for its decision to replace the deeply British Guy Wilks with a very Norwegian-sounding Norwegian called Andreas. Mikkelsen didn't endear himself to those from these parts by sticking his Union Flag-bonneted Fabia into the wall on the first corner of the first rally.

It wasn't hard to find people more than ready to re-arrange the following words into a sentence: you, so and told.

Then the season turned around and Mikkelsen and Skoda UK celebrated long and hard with last year's title, but those detractors are still detracting from what the team achieved and is achieving. And that, as far as I can see, is simply stupid.

Still sitting in traffic (although considerably happier given that we were now outside Edgbaston, allowing me 294 reasons to remember Alistair Cook's visit to this same place last year), I considered the importance of Skoda UK Motorsport to British rallying.

The Europe-wide IRC programme is really just the tip of the iceberg for the British importer of Superbs, Octavias and the rest. Look beyond Mikkelsen and you'll see more domestic support for rallying than from, I'd wager, any other manufacturer.

Skoda has commitments in several series, including the British Rally Championship © LAT

Dealers are firmly onside with this top-down love of rallying, with Rainworth Skoda - a Mansfield-based network of garages - backing the BTRDA-qualifying Dukeries Rally, while Simpsons Skoda supported Jonny Greere's Fabia-based BRC assault last season. Simpsons does have the added advantage of being run by one of British rallying's best national drivers in Neil Simpson.

The support goes on: who supplied all the official vehicles to the opening round of this year's British Rally Championship? That'll be the same firm that has regularly done the same for Britain's round of the IRC. And the rally element of the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

I know what you're saying. That's all great and it helps the rallies to run, but Skoda UK isn't exactly doing a lot for British drivers, is it?

Wrong again, I'm afraid. It was Milton Keynes which funded the three rally drivers from the MSA's Team UK scheme to test one of the world's finest Super 2000 cars. And a quick glimpse at the c-pillar of the Fabia that is leading this year's IRC will reveal 'Go Motorsport' decals, demonstrating Skoda UK's continued support in efforts to attract more youngsters to our sport.

I wasn't going to go to Birmingham to drive the Citigo earlier this week. I didn't really see the relevance of me driving around Britain's second city (in the traffic and the snow) when I write about rally cars. But I thought again. Having taken the time and expense to ship the most British Norwegian from his homeland to his second homeland, it seemed silly not to go.

Mikkelsen continues to polarise opinion in British rallying, but the fact is that he has won events and titles where no British driver would have done. I'm fully aware that the likes of Elfyn Evans, Alastair Fisher and a good few other British drivers are now close to that position, but, here and now, Mikkelsen is still the man to wave our flag.

Skoda's Fabia WRC departed at the end of 2005 © LAT

So, we should be grateful to Skoda UK Motorsport because without it, British rallying would be considerably poorer. And Skoda UK Motorsport would be considerably poorer without one person. In fact, it's a fair question to ask if it would even be in existence without Catherine Sleigh. Cathie has been the driving force behind this thing from the outset.

In fact, before the IRC had even been created, Cathie was doing her bit to push the sporting side of Skoda. I can't think of another importer around the world who made better use of Skoda's factory World Rally Championship effort right up until the moment the Fabia WRC departed at the end of 2005.

But, from the 2009 Rally of Scotland onwards, Sleigh has been instrumental in the teams rise through the ranks and deserves considerable credit for getting Skoda UK Motorsport where it is today - and for getting me to sit in the Black Country rush hour on a Tuesday afternoon.

Precisely what the future will be for the team at the end of the this season is hard to know. Mikkelsen's future is increasingly linked to Volkswagen's WRC programme and you would have to question the merit in a third successive season at the wheel of the UK Fabia, especially when so much has already been achieved.

But, like I said, there are a number of less Norwegian-sounding Brits who are coming on line to do a job.

And, in the meantime, that Citigo one-make series - the one this car was made for - isn't going to run itself...