Sunstroke. The story started with sunstroke.
When David Richards stepped out of the World Rally Championship-winning Ford Escort he’d shared with Ari Vatanen at the end of 1981, the Finn knew who he wanted in the seat alongside him. Step forward Terry Harryman.
Vatanen and Harryman had, of course, been team-mates at David Sutton the previous season, when Terry was working with Malcolm Wilson. And it was a freak moment on the 1981 Acropolis recce which made the connection.
“I had sunstroke,” Wilson told DirtFish. “I was ill for a couple of days and couldn’t get to the recce. David [Richards] was tied up somewhere else on some commercial things, so Terry went with Ari on the recce for two days. When they came back to Glyfada, where we were based for the recce, Ari said immediately: “Wow. Your co-driver’s good, eh… He’s very, very good at delivering the notes.
“That’s, to be honest, how the connection was made and that’s how Terry ended up going with Ari. It was all about the way he worked with the notes on those two days on the Acropolis.”
Wilson and Harryman were together for three seasons, forging a strong partnership and a stronger friendship
Reading notes is what co-drivers do, but not all co-drivers deliver notes. That was Terry.
“He was special,” continued the FIA deputy president. “To this day, he is still, what I would regard, as the best deliverer of pace notes of any co-driver I ever had. His sense of timing in the car was just incredible, he just had something special.”
The Wilson-Harryman story started on the Ulster Rally in 1978.
“I’d never spoken to Terry at the time,” said Wilson. “I didn’t really know him. My co-driver back then was Ron Palmer, we’d been together for a while, but Ron couldn’t make this one particular event. He told me: “You don’t need to worry, I’ve sorted everything out.”
“Going into that Ulster, I’d had a fairly miserable run with, like three accidents or something. I’d had to go and buy a new car because the one I’d wrecked on Epynt [the rally before] wouldn’t be ready. So I was in a car I wasn’t 100% happy with and a new co-driver I’d never spoken to before.
“We set off and things were going quite well, we were running second to John Taylor and there was one stage up and over the mountains tops. We got to the end of it and I think we were probably quickest. To this day, I’ll never forget Terry when we pulled away from the control. “Right,” he said, “Listen here, young man. That was bloody fantastic. But if you’re going to continue to drive like that, we’re not going to get to the end of the rally…” That was the authority of Mr. Harryman.
“In the car, he was iceman an absolute iceman and, like I said, the way he could deliver the notes was amazing. And that’s not easy when you’re moving between drivers and drivers want their notes calling in a slightly different way – Terry always got it right and that’s exactly why he was with Ari.”
Wilson and Harryman went on to dominate the 1979 British national championship and enjoy plenty more success across the next two seasons.
“They were great times,” said Wilson. “Great times with plenty of stories, but that was Terry. He was such good company, he came to my and Elaine’s wedding. Sadly, we’ve lost another legend.”
