There are eight full-time Rally1 drivers in this year’s World Rally Championship. John Coyne has helped nurture 25% of them.
It’s an incredible headline statistic, but not one that satisfies the patron and founder of the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy. Forever with his eyes forward, Coyne’s aim is to have an Irish World Rally champion by 2030.
Josh McErlean and Jon Armstrong are the leading contenders shooting for that hoop, considering they are both contesting all 14 rounds in Ford Puma Rally1s in 2026 – McErlean in his second Rally1 season; Armstrong his first.
The first mission is for both of them to position themselves for a good drive in 2027, when the WRC’s technical regulations are set to change.
“To position for 2027, I wanted both Josh and Jon and Eoin [Treacy] and Shane [Byrne] to get the exposure to all the rounds of the championship in a high pressure but supportive environment,” said Coyne on DirtFish’s podcast, SPIN, The Rally Pod.
“I think we’ve ticked all those boxes and we’ll keep working on it through this year.”
The Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy has struck up a strong relationship with M-Sport
The Academy has created a “very good working relationship with M-Sport” which began in 2024 when reigning Junior WRC champion William Creighton stepped up to WRC2 as his prize.
In the same year, Armstrong drove the Fiesta Rally2 in the European Rally Championship while McErlean then joined the Ford squad one season later.
“We tend to be very, shall I say, philosophically aligned in terms of our thinking about the development of young drivers and what’s required,” Coyne said.
“There’s certainly been some give and take in how we go about that. I think we’ve improved the process by putting more emphasis on performance analysis and guidance for the crews rather than focusing all the engineering effort just on the car.
“You know, in my view, at that stage of development where there’s young drivers, there’s even more to be extracted from proper management and analysis and guidance of the drivers and co-drivers themselves, then there may be to come from minor setup tweaks, right?
“So we’ve been, over the last two years in JWRC, WRC2 and now in Rally1, working with M-Sport, shifting the focus just a little bit towards more direct support and work with the crews themselves to improve performance.”
McErlean and Armstrong are in unique positions, as they’re not just team-mates at M-Sport but also the Academy. That means they’re more inclined to help one another than other team-mates might be, but not at the expense of competition.
“Obviously there’s competition because they wouldn’t be worth their seat if they didn’t want to be the top driver!” Coyne said. “So of course they’re both competing with each other to be the the top driver at M-Sport.
“Just as last year, you know, Josh was new to the team, but he was competing with Grég [Munster] and competing with Mãrtiņš [Sesks], and at the end of the year, Josh had led the team home six times, Grég had led the team home six times and Mãrtiņš had led the team home twice.
“There’s a lot of competition, but there’s also a lot of work between the two crews to help each of them improve their performance,” Coyne added. “That’s what we expect of them, that they’re going to help each other. They’re going to raise each other’s game.
“And there’s going to be some cross breeding, if you like, between the things that each of the crew members are good at. That is an advantage of having the Academy underpinning the effort – that they share a common process of how you go about preparing for and dissecting the performance after, and developing the plan for the next round.”
All four Irish crew members are to support each other, but are allowed to be competitive!
So what are the expectations placed upon each driver? Are they the same, or different considerng McErlean has more WRC experiecne but Armstrong has been rallying for more years?
“Essentially, the expectations are similar in that, yes, Jon’s five years older, has arguably more overall experience, but Josh has been in kind of higher categories for longer. It’ll be interesting to see how the year plays out,” Coyne explained.
“The only team orders are that they both extract the best performance from themselves, and that they support each other in trying to accomplish that.”
To learn more about the Academy’s ambitions, the story behind McErlean’s Rally1 drive, Coyne’s own rallying backstory and who the mystery guest asking him questions is, check out SPIN, The Rally Pod below or via your chosen podcast provider.
