I’ve had a long-standing joke with M-Sport’s new 2025 World Rally Championship driver, Josh McErlean, for years.
The so-called ‘Josh McErlean Talent Factory’, as we’ve dubbed it, has produced many graduates.
Aaron Johnston (Oliver Solberg, then Takamoto Katsuta), Keaton Williams (Takamoto Katsuta, then Brandon Semenuk) and James Fulton (Craig Breen, back to McErlean and now Yuki Yamamoto) have all been along for the ride with McErlean, but moved onto a bigger and better opportunity.
Well, Josh – this is your moment. You are now a graduate of your own regime.
I vividly remember the first time I met Josh. A fresh-faced 19-year-old, he had already been making an impression in the junior ranks of the British Rally Championship, but it was his performance on the Ulster Rally that really stood out.
I was running around the service park, collecting video interviews with drivers as part of my work for Prestone, which sponsored the BRC at that time in 2018. Rhys Yates was putting in a shift, chasing down champion-to-be Matt Edwards, but it was McErlean that had my attention.
In an unfancied Ford Fiesta R2T up against the Peugeot 208 R2 of eventual champion Steve Røkland – a driver with international experience – McErlean was on the hunt. Just 0.4s stood between him and Røkland’s class lead.
Sadly I don’t have the video file backed up (I’ve checked), but Josh was confident, yet not cocky. His driving was doing the real talking, but he was coming across incredibly well, too.
Unfortunately a crash on the final stage would put paid to any result, but it didn’t really matter. A point had been made. A year later, McErlean would return to the Ulster and claim the Junior British championship – becoming the first driver to win what had always been a hotly-contested series in the modern era with a round to spare.
A step up to R5 beckoned as a prize, with McErlean thrust into a Hyundai for Wales Rally GB. (Obligatory moment please to feel sad that that was the last time the rally ever ran, thanks). Early mechanical trouble robbed him of the result there, but his speed was impressive considering his lack of experience.
A full British Rally Championship campaign would’ve been a great benchmark in 2020 had the pandemic not arrived and stopped the world in its tracks. But not McErlean – he ended up finishing his season with a WRC run at Monza.
McErlean spent the early 2020s learning his craft in a low key fashion across Europe
The following few years have been at times anonymous, as he’s racked up experience in the ERC and WRC3, then WRC2. But the big move to a Toksport Škoda unleashed him in 2024 – driving alongside three team-mates who all had Rally1 experience but not seeming out of his depth.
Who can forget that mad Rally Portugal where he almost won but lost out to Jan Solans with a poor penultimate stage? Or that quirky WRC stage win he claimed in Portugal 2022 when weather transformed conditions on a superspecial. There have been real moments of quality along the way.
Throughout it all Josh has remained someone I’ve kept close tabs on. It’s been a rare privilege for me as a budding rally journalist to actually monitor somebody throughout the entirety of their career, and them then make it to the top.
I like to think we’ve both come a long way from the days of me texting him to gossip about the untimeliness of a new Junior WRC prize for Fiesta Rally4 drivers in the Junior BRC, just after McErlean had traded his Ford in for a Peugeot.
I was sitting in a library pretending to do my university dissertation at the time – did either of us ever think we’d make the WRC? Josh probably did; I know I didn’t.
Did I think he would make the WRC? If I’m honest, no – but not through a lack of talent, more opportunity. The Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy has changed all of that and today’s news is the biggest sign yet of the impact that program is making.
McErlean's 2024 was a breakthrough aboard a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 - but Rally1 will be a big step
For attitude alone, McErlean deserves this chance. He’s worked hard at becoming the driver he is today, and is a real example of hard work paying off and good things happening to good people.
There’s a real mountain to climb, more scrutiny than he’s ever had to combat and inevitably there’ll be mistakes to overcome, but Josh will give this his absolute all, and he’ll do it with a smile – poignantly, and inadvertently, a fitting tribute to the last WRC driver to carry the green, white and orange of Ireland on the side of their Rally1 car.
Is McErlean truly ready for this chance? That’s the big question that the next 14 rounds of the WRC will help answer. But right now, that doesn’t really matter.
He’s in the fortunate position to have an ASN prepared to invest this much in him, and he’s living the dream you or I wish we could be, too. Don’t hold that against him.
