It’s a way of life
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The M-Sport Stobart WorLd RaLLy Team is preparing for a race in 40ºC heat over rock-strewn passes in Jordan, driven by Bob Baker
Words: Christopher Walton
ON 14 APRIL THE World Rally Championship hits the Middle East, when the third Jordan rally goes under starters orders. But before the two Ford Fiesta RSs of the M-Sport Stobart World Rally Team hit the gravel of the Dead Sea Centre, it’s a ‘simple’ drive from Faro in Portugal for Bob Baker, who’s been driving the Stobart rally teams’ trucks for the past three and a half years.
The Rally de Portugal is set to take place on 24 to 27 March and the M-Sport Stobart team will be looking for a good result, as they currently sit third in the manufacturers table with 36 points, behind the second place Citröen Total team and the top of the tree Ford Abu Dhabi team. But after Portugal wraps up, it’s a trudge through the Algarve and the Spanish coast – before hopping into the south of France and a full traverse of Italy, a ferry to Syria and a border crossing into Jordan.
For some drivers it might sound like the job from hell, but for those with longdistance travel in their blood it is a dream (although there is a chance to fly home between rallies once the vehicles are in place). Baker is a little more sanguine about his responsibilities driving the two cars to the 13 European rallies on the tour (Mexico, Australia and Argentina – the three ‘fly-aways’ are a bit far for driving). “It was just something that appealed to me, driving somewhere a little bit different.
You could certainly call the Dead Sea and Jordan’s capital Amman just that – at least when compared with Baker’s home town of Preston.
Being part of the Stobart rally team isn’t just a case of driving long distances – the crew is expected to help provide hospitality for guests at the rallies themselves. At the Swedish Rally, he was responsible for a show tent of Ford cars.
“It’s like one big family,” he says of the camaraderie on tour. “And I enjoy the rallies. My son drives a little bit as well. I have always had a little bit of racing in my blood – it’s been brilliant for me.”
I would drive 3,000 miles
Baker, 56, has been driving HGVs in the Middle East for the past 31 years. He started out with David T Duxsbury – a Preston-based haulier that ran from Lancashire to Baghdad. Yes, that Baghdad, in Iraq – a mere 3,000 mile (oneway) trip.
“I met with them, as they were a local firm and I was a driver. A month later they rang me up and said you are off to Iraq and you had better get a passport. My first trip abroad was to Baghdad. I went with another driver and he showed me the ropes,” he tells CM.
Back in 1979, Baker recalls, border crossings were painful. And not just the notoriously tricky ones like Turkey into Iraq (a 24-hour wait) or Bulgaria into Turkey (12 hours). Before European borders were opened, getting from Austria into Yugoslavia, for example, would mean a twoor three-hour delay.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, one of the loads Baker was taking into Baghdad, where the average temperature in July is 44ºC, was air-conditioning units; but demand back then was high for everything from concrete water pipes to construction equipment. Baker even back-loaded two dumper trucks to St Helens. It all paints a very different picture of a country that has since been ravaged by three wars and spent several decades under the rule of an infamous dictator.
“Iraq was so busy then,” he says. “It had a trade fair every year that firms from the world over would want to show their goods at.” Baker spent two years trucking between the North-West and the Middle East for Duxsbury Freight, and he says he learned a whole new way of life: “It wasn’t just a case of being a driver, you had to do the paper work, you had to be a mechanic. If you saw a fellow European driver who had broken down on the side of the road, you always stopped.” His Middle East mentor was Dave Duxsbury, who started his life as a long-distance tramper in a regular ERF (with no sleeper cab) before upgrading to a two-bunk Volvo F89: “When you compare the trucks now to what we used to have...” he says, without any need to finish the sentence.
What has also changed is the Middle East itself. He returned to Jordan two years ago with the Stobart Rally team and describes the experience as “brilliant” . “We were driving to [the rally] by the Dead Sea, a five-hour drive, and you could see the Bedouin in their tents by the side of the road and they had satellite TV! The differences were unbelievable. They had all the electrical gear they never used to have. One of the biggest differences now is you can tell what all the Arabic signs say, as they have been translated into English!” However, despite the excitement of being able to drive to the Middle East again, Baker misses some of the camaraderie of the open road that used to exist in the 70s and 80s when many UK firms were running trucks into the region.
“You got to know a lot of the lads, and you always stopped at the same places. If you were able to call home, you would tell their wives they were OK.” Once the Jordan rally is over, he will take the truck back through Syria and on the ferry back to Italy – just in time for the Rally d’Italia Sardegna (the Sardinian Rally). In the next seven months, he says he will be back at home for “maybe a couple of days” all in the name of the 38th World Rally Championship. For millions of petrol heads, it is worth every mile. ■