🇪🇸 José Antonio Suárez

Known universally as "Cohete" — Spanish for rocket — a nickname he spent years resenting because nobody could remember his actual name, and has since made peace with on marketing grounds.

Born in Pravia, Asturias in 1990, Suárez came up through the Ford Fiesta R2 ranks and was runner-up in the WRC Academy in 2012, then won the Volant Peugeot in France in 2015. A world championship season followed the same year in a Peugeot 208 T16, six events producing a best of sixth on Monte Carlo, and that was broadly that for his international career.

What he did instead is win at home, repeatedly: the Spanish gravel championship in 2017 and 2023, the Spanish Superchampionship in 2021, 2023 and 2025 with co-driver Alberto Iglesias, and a gold medal at the 2024 FIA Motorsport Games. He has been unusually direct about the choice — offered a Rally1 outing on his home event he declined it, on the grounds that he is paid to win the Spanish championship and that is the job. He has said he wanted to be a rally driver from the age of three or four, got there as a national driver, and has no wish to leave.