If Craig Breen is now the self-proclaimed mayor of Brattby, what does that make James Fulton?
The laugh down the phone when DirtFish asks Fulton this very question was akin to the giggles Breen just couldn’t hide at stage-end when he found out he’d beaten everybody on the second pass to the tune of 7.8 seconds.
And just like Breen was when pressed why that particular stage last Friday served him so well, Fulton doesn’t have an answer to hand.
“Aw, I don’t know,” he replies. “Vice maybe or something?”
It’s the only time either of them appeared even remotely stumped before, during or after Rally Sweden.
By now, Breen’s sensational return to form, unlocked by his trip back across from Cockermouth to Alzenau, is well documented. We’ve learned what it means to him to have reminded the World Rally Championship just what he can do and why the venture back to Hyundai was the right one.
But what we haven’t considered in full is the impact all of this had on his right-hand man. Because unlike Breen, Fulton hasn’t been here before. Sweden was no return to Hyundai or even the podium – Sweden was just Fulton’s second ever rally at the top of the WRC.
“Of course fighting for the lead of a WRC rally it obviously doesn’t get any higher, but it’s still similar [to fighting at the front of any other rally]. I still have to do my job and, to be honest, I didn’t really get that caught up in it,” Fulton shares.
“I just focused on what I had to do and just keeping Craig in a good place.”
In a similar vein to Vincent Landais alongside Sébastien Ogier in Monte Carlo, Fulton never once looked out of place in Sweden. If you’re a newly-converted rally fan who didn’t pay close attention to the 2022 season, you simply would not have known that he and Breen were a burgeoning partnership.
But perhaps his adaptation is even more impressive than Landais’ given Landais did have several top-line WRC starts under his belt already alongside Pierre-Louis Loubet.
Fulton’s no stranger to the WRC, having been the WRC2 Junior co-driver champion co-driver last year sitting alongside Josh McErlean, but it shouldn’t be underestimated what an impressive job he did last week.
As a professional co-driver for a manufacturer team, Fulton will see this as simply him doing his job. But given the questions that hung over Breen heading into the rally, this was about as tricky a job as he could have had and Fulton managed it superbly.
He credits the strategy devised between Breen and the now-retired Paul Nagle in phasing Fulton into Breen’s camp with behind-the-scenes pacenote work and then a first start in Japan at the end of 2022 for this speedy adaptation.
“It’s been really easy from my side to be honest, he’s really accommodating,” Fulton says of Breen.
“What we have works and I think we’ve done it right in terms of me being on events last year with Paul, the transition last year, doing Japan – but a lot of people don’t see the work that driver and co-driver do behind the scenes.
“We’ve put in a lot of work over the last few weeks looking over notes from previous years, over Christmas and everything. We’re in constant contact and working together, both of us have the same goal and it makes everything so much easier.”
And that goal is to, one day, become World Rally champions. That may have to wait for a year or two with Breen and Fulton only on a part-time Rally1 program with Hyundai this term, but after their Sweden performance – where Breen got closer to a WRC win than he ever has before – it suddenly feels a lot more believable than it did just a few months ago.
Fulton says he knew that would be the case.
“To be honest, no,” he replies when asked if he’s surprised he and Breen have scored a podium so quickly.
“Coming into it I knew how strong Craig was in Sweden and from the tests and everything and his frame of mind over the last few weeks, coupled with the preparations and the effort and everything we’ve put into it, the target was to be at the front.
“I definitely knew it was possible. Leading up to the event, just the way he was doing everything and the way everything worked out with the team putting everything behind us to get us everything we wanted, I knew it was possible for sure.”
A lot of that is down to what Fulton describes as the “good vibe” at Hyundai. Even if his top-line WRC career is still incredibly immature, Fulton’s worked with two of the Rally1 teams in his first two events and feels Hyundai is a “brilliant” team to be a part of with “so many good people” on the payroll.
And he appreciates that more than you might think. The emotional toll 2022 took on Breen has been made even more obvious by how refreshed he now looks, but last year was tough for Fulton too – both competitively with a topsy-turvy season in McErlean’s i20 N Rally2 but also as part of team Breen.
“Yeah last year was trying for me also, a tricky year and a lot of learning in WRC2 but to be honest I think that’s helped me develop,” Fulton says.
“I was with Craig last year and I’ve been there through all the lows in the background and I saw how challenging it was for everyone. It’s nice now to have come out the right side of it.”
Asked if he’s noticed a difference in Breen since the end of last year, Fulton’s response is an emphatic: “Yeah, for sure.
“He’s in a really good place at the moment. OK, there was so much pressure on him at the end of last year so this is a whole new fresh start for him.
“Like he said in one of the end-of-stage interviews, he’s got his second chance and he’s well aware that he needs to make the most of it. We both do, it’s good.”
So far so good on that front with a second-place finish first time out. That second could have been third had Hyundai’s team order decision worked out the way it was planned, but it could so easily have been first too given Breen and Fulton led the rally for nine successive stages in an intense fight with eventual winners Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja.
Sunday’s first two stages were key to seeing if Breen had a chance to topple the M-Sport crew before being asked to allow team-mate Thierry Neuville through, but it could have been so different had his hybrid unit not failed on Saturday afternoon.
That four-stage loop was particularly chaotic with tire delaminations affecting the three leading crews but, looking at the stage times compared to the rest of the weekend, it’s clear how badly that lack of extra power cost the Hyundai pairing.
“Everyone talks about Sweden being so fast, there’s a lot of junctions and big, long straights out of it so the hybrid is a good help getting the momentum up and going,” says Fulton.
“I think it did hamper us quite a bit, especially on the Umeå stage which has been described as Ypres on ice because it’s junction, straight, junction, straight. It was evident there we lost a lot of time there.
“But look, there’s never really going to be a weekend without some issues so we just have to overcome these things, a lot of other drivers had their issues too. We just had to deal with it.”
Tänak’s tire letting go on Saturday’s penultimate test makes it impossible to calculate how the fight would have gone had neither of the leaders suffered problems. But, as impressive as Tänak’s run through Sävar 2 was, the fact he still beat Breen by 2.8s does show the disadvantage the Irishmen were at that afternoon.
These aren’t thoughts that’ll be populating their minds though. Wondering what might have been ultimately gets you nowhere. But surely there must be at least a tinge of disappointment that this epic performance in Sweden didn’t yield a maiden WRC victory?
“That’s a good question. Before the rally if we’d have been told we would finish second… you obviously take everything you can and it would have been great – it is brilliant.
“But there is a small bit of me that knows it was definitely possible to get the win and it’s a bit of what could have been,” Fulton candidly says.
“But we have to be happy with our performance all weekend.”
Now, sights are fully set on settling that score.
“Yeah, without doubt. I think we proved this weekend… a lot of people said your road position, your road position, but on Saturday when the other guys had a good road position too, like Tänak, we were swapping times, we were in the mix.
“It proves it wasn’t all about road position. OK it definitely was a help on Friday but the win is definitely possible. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was.
“When and where, let’s see, but every rally we’ll keep giving it our all and we’ll see what happens.”
