All hail the ‘mayor of Brattby’.
The joy that oozes from Craig Breen when everything is going well was the World Rally Championship’s loss in 2022.
Breen was continually crushed to the point of near suffocation by his ever-worsening circumstances last year. Absolutely nothing went right and the situation just got away from him.
But the buzz has returned this weekend. The hysterical laughter as he learned he had just outpaced everybody by 7.8 seconds on the second pass of Brattby – a stage he also won in the morning – was infectious.
“I can probably be the mayor Brattby at this stage,” he beamed.
“The car is on absolute rails, it’s just… I’ve never had anything like that before. It’s just class.
“More of that please, yeah.”
Thrust back into an environment he had thought it was wise to leave behind, Breen has absolutely flourished.
As one commenter put it on DirtFish Live Center’s coverage of Friday: “CB doesn’t just stand for Craig Breen, it stands for comeback.”
Breen had the best of the conditions on Friday as the last of the works Rally1 cars onto the stages, there’s no hiding away from that. But he has utilized that spectacularly – taking chunks of time out of drivers on a rally where gaps are supposed to be small.
Watch any footage from today, go back and watch some. You’ll see a driver who has full trust in the tool between his fingertips and beneath his backside. It’s to both Breen and Hyundai’s credit that after just two days of testing, he’s been able to find such a devastating rhythm so quickly.
Breen certainly didn’t expect it. He told us at lunchtime that it was “a pleasant surprise” for the times to be so strong and that he “didn’t feel anything special” on the stages.
Breen in a Hyundai is an entirely different prospect to Breen in a Ford
But then he dropped this little thought-provoking nugget.
“For sure there’s been points last year where I’ve felt I’ve been pushing a lot harder than that and the time’s weren’t coming so maybe there’s something to be read out of that.”
It’s become immediately obvious that Breen is already better friends with the i20 N Rally1 than his old Ford Puma. At times last year Breen was capable of strong stage times, but he never looked comfortable doing it. Things looked on the ragged edge of disaster – which is perhaps why he found himself there far too often.
When you push hard, naturally you flirt closer to danger. But equally, you can overdrive. The best stage times and performances often come when it all feels easy and effortless – when the driver doesn’t have to actively be thinking about pushing, they simply are pushing because they have full confidence in everything around them.
That’s where Breen appears to be.
The rally’s still long, there’s two days to go and Ott Tänak is only 2.6 seconds behind. He has a big job on his hands to try and defend this lead and claim his first rally win.
But the end result almost doesn’t matter – the very fact that Breen is even in this position means that he has already answered the key question that hung over him upon his Hyundai return.
He hadn’t suddenly become a bad rally driver last year, he was just in a situation and environment that didn’t extract his best. It’s telling that after just eight stages back in a Hyundai, he looks happier and more confident than he did at any point during an entire year at M-Sport.
We’ll likely never know the full truth of just why the Breen and M-Sport Ford relationship – that was so heavily hyped once it was announced – unravelled so rapidly; why it just didn’t work.
But Breen in a Hyundai is an entirely different prospect to Breen in a Ford. To be leading his old team home tonight is the best indication of that.
“At this point last year I was usually upside down or stuck in a hedge somewhere,” Breen chuckled, “so it makes very nice music to my ears to be leading the rally overnight.
“Of course, I had the perfect road position but we tried to benefit from it as much as we can. There’s a lot of work to be done but honestly the enjoyment you have on days like this – it might even be on the same level of buzz I get in an historic car.
“[Tomorrow] it’s the mad hatter’s tea party and we’re all invited. Can’t wait.”
