🇬🇧 Gus Greensmith
About
A British driver whose path has run the opposite way to most: into the top flight early, then back down to win the thing he had skipped.
He took the Junior British championship in 2014 and contested his first world championship round the same year in a front-wheel-drive Fiesta. Four seasons in M-Sport's WRC2 operation followed, the best of them 2019, before he was promoted to the factory Rally1 car for 2020. Three years there produced a first stage win at Monte Carlo in 2022 and a points finish roughly every other event, but no podium.
Dropping back to WRC2 with Toksport's Škoda in 2023 reframed him. He won in Mexico and Portugal, added two more podiums and lost the championship only at the final round — one of three drivers who came down from Rally1 that season, alongside Adrien Fourmaux and Oliver Solberg. After three years in the Fabia he moved to the Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, which is the unglamorous part of a rally career: the equipment changes, the job of beating everyone in it does not.