University of Gloucestershire student Alfie Element has just recently been selected for the Motorsport UK Rally Academy alongside nine other athletes. Element will partake in their Co-Driver programme, whilst his driving partner, Sven Grube, will take part in the driving programme.
Element started co-driving little under four years ago and recently joined the Mini Rally Challenge with Grube where they won the Gravel Championship. The Welshman stated “that helped me get into the academy and from here I’ll be doing another full season campaign and the academy will help me with lots of things such as writing pace-notes and finding sponsorships to help fund it all.”
Speaking on what sort of opportunities the sponsorship could bring, Element said “rallying is an expensive sport, like all motorsports, I’m doing an event tomorrow across the weekend and the entrance fee is about £400., and that’s considered cheap. Later on in the year I’m looking into doing one which has a £2,000 entrance fee and as a co-driver I have to contribute quite a fair bit to that so it’ll help with entry fees, running the car, the team that work on the car and of course getting to and from events and accommodation.”
The man from Pontypridd went on to refer to his Gravel Championship as one of his greatest achievements in railcar so far before adding that he is aiming to “come away with a championship win” again this season despite having to retire the car during the first event.
Element added that he got into rallying through his dad, stating that “he was a bit of a nutcase, he was rallying when he was younger so I grew up watching it and being brought to events. We both started rallying with our best mates, so I sort of followed in his footsteps.”
Adding that, “he gave me all his old gear which was nice because it meant I didn’t need to spend over a grand on overalls, and now I couldn’t imagine a life without rallying, I really couldn’t.”
The 20-year-old rounded off by speaking on his aspirations within rally, saying “This will help me get to the top, and that’s my goal, hopefully one day in the next ten years to compete in the WRC (World Rally Championship), which is the highest level you can get to in rallying.”
