Subaru World Rally Team co-driver Phil Mills takes great pride in his nationality. His helmet bears the famous red dragon of Wales and the flag on his overalls is the Welsh standard, not the Union flag of Britain. Born in Trefeglwys, Mid Wales, Mills still lives near Newtown in the foothills of the Cambrian mountains.

It was in the heart of Wales that rallying first came to Phil's attention. He says: "I lived in the middle of rally country and there was an event on every weekend. Whether it was a road rally or stage event, there was always some sort of competitive action - one stage even started outside my gate. I fell in love with the sport. With 200 cars passing in front of your house,

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it's pretty hard not to get the buzz."
Phil made a decision to start one of the rallies himself but, without any family history of rallying, his rally career had to be entirely self-driven. He scraped together enough money to enter a road rally, in which a co-driver is given two points on a map and has to guide the driver there in the quickest time possible.

"With road rallying you had to get all your information from a topographic map," explains Phil. "There aren't any pace notes and reading the map could be tricky in some places where the roads aren't marked or there are several routes you can follow."

This is where Phil's fascination with maps began. "It's sad, I know, but I loved the maps. Back then all maps were hand-drawn; it is only in the last five years or so that we've moved on to reproducing them from satellite photos. I just loved the thought you could take a blank piece of paper and turn it into a map."

Had the rallying career not been so successful, Phil would have pursued his interest in cartography as a profession. Luckily for him and us, success came quickly in rallies. Phil started to compete regularly on road rallies; after only one season in the sport, he had won his first class title in the Welsh Road Rally Championship. He continued to build his experience at club level during the 1980s and found himself increasingly in demand from drivers. Between 1988 and 1990 he tackled 88 rallies. Phil laughs when he remembers those two years: "I got in touch with my friends at the local motor club and asked if they needed a co-driver. Sometimes I'd read the entry lists for rallies to see if any drivers had entered without a co-driver and then call and offer to read for them. I just kept my ear to the ground and looked out for good co-driving positions. I needed as much experience as possible, but 88 rallies in two years was a lot - I don't know when I went to bed that year!"

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Indeed, sleep was rare for Phil as, at 22 years old, he was also working full-time in a garage to finance his rallying. Every penny he earned was fed back into the sport. Phil remembers: "I was working in a dealership, as a mechanic in the workshop. It was the only way I could do it because finances were very, very close to the wire. I had to hold down a permanent job, but it was a very difficult time as I had a lot of early mornings and late nights trying to get work done for the rally in the evenings and then going to the work at 0700hrs the next morning."

His punishing schedule left him exhausted, but it prepared him for the next step in his career. At the beginning of the 1990s, he made the jump from road rallies to national stage rallies, a move that demanded a re-honing of his skills. Phil needed to learn the art of making and reading pace notes instead of using maps. "I entered some 'beginners' rallies and got my experience from there," Phil says, "in Wales there are rallies in the Epynt military range where you can recce the stage as many times as you like the weekend before an event. I went through time and time until I was happy with the notes. It gave me a great opportunity to perfect my pace notes."

During this period, Phil also tried his hand at driving. "I did two years of rallying while I was at college, I'm glad I did as it helped me make my mind up about which discipline I wanted to follow. I made the right decision and I got it out of the system so I could concentrate on co-driving."

Phil got his international break in the Group N category of the 1990 British Rally Championship alongside rising British star Graham Middleton. The highlight of the year came on the Welsh Rally where they finished third overall. After three years together, Phil's career took yet another twist when he switched roles and started work as a co-ordinator for Malcolm Wilson Motorsport, now known as M-Sport, which runs Ford's World Rally Championship assault. There he co-ordinated the travel and accommodation for the team and handled all on-event movements; very much like Subaru's own Ken Rees.

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Still keen to compete, Phil kept his hand in and co-drove for selected drivers in various championships. During this time he competed in another continent for the first time when he sat with Mohammed Bin Sulayem in rounds of the Middle East Rally Championship. It was with Bin Sulayem that Phil gained his first international victory on the 1994 Rally of Jordan.

Five years later, M-Sport was to provide Phil with the greatest opportunity of his career. Wilson had just signed a young, fresh-faced, bubbly Norwegian driver for selected rounds of the World Rally Championship; he was enthusiastic and hungry for success, but he needed a co-driver. Wilson gave Phil the option of sitting with the debutant Petter Solberg.

"I was offered the seat by M-Sport and it was my decision whether I wanted to take it further," he says. "I'd just won the British Rally Championship with Mark Higgins and we'd done a deal to go back and defend our title, but having already won the championship, so we had nothing more to achieve. I wanted to move on to the WRC, so going with Petter seemed like the logical choice. He had an offer of doing six events, which was ideal for me as I could still work in the team office doing my day job. Ultimately it was a very easy decision; Petter was obviously very fast, bursting with enthusiasm and that's what I liked about him. He had one goal: to win. That was what I wanted as well, so we gelled straight away."

The pair became good friends, despite the obvious nationality and language barriers. "We have similar sense of humour," Phil explains, "Spending a lot of time together in the car together, you have to become good friends."

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Phil's wealth of expertise proved a vital boost to the promising but inexperienced Norwegian driver, and in their first two years together they achieved a string of excellent results. "I was a bit older than Petter," comments Phil, "and could share my experience with him. I had done a lot of pace note rallies, whereas he hadn't done a huge amount, so it made a good partnership."

In August 2000, it was announced that the pair were to leave Ford to join the Subaru World Rally Team. They showed great pace straight away, but solid results did not come immediately. The following year the duo were richly rewarded with a perfectly controlled second place in Greece and in 2002 they finished on the podium five times - including a sensational first WRC victory in Wales: "My home turf has a lot to answer for! That first victory was just incredible."

The momentum they picked up continued into the 2003 season when, in their most successful year of rally driving to date, they scored four outright rally victories, 48 stage wins and seven podium finishes. In a spectacular finale to the WRC series, the pair won Wales Rally GB for a second consecutive time and secured the 2003 WRC drivers' and co-drivers' titles.

The success, Phil says, makes the event memorable, but what makes it special is the atmosphere. "The rally is very nostalgic for me because of the results, but it's got a different feel to any other round on the calendar that's difficult to put into words. You've got the spectators wrapped up in their woolly hats, it's dark and cold, especially this year now it's back in its original date on the calendar. You can expect ice and mud up to your knees but the atmosphere is very special. I have a lot of good memories of the event."