Photography kyle johnson
testing the limits Andy Stott on pursuing his passion for rally car racing.
My dad was a mechanic and used to race cars in his spare time. He never forced it on me. If I wasn’t at the circuit watching him with my mum, I was watching cars on the TV. One time he was racing in a forest. The danger with that is there are no barriers; trees don’t move, know what I mean? His car flipped on a tight bend, hit a tree roof first and bent like a banana. He was trapped upside down, and all he could hear was fuel spilling outside the car—a ticking time bomb. People eventually came, pushed the car back over and got him out. I remember him dropping me off at school when it was snowing. We were in his normal car, and I said to him, “Slide it around this corner.” So he ST—042
pulled the handbrake and passed the school in this big power slide. I think he would have done it even if I hadn’t asked him. I was laughing, but my mom was saying, “This is stupid!’’ And we were like, “No, this is wicked.” I’ve got this 1972 Ford Escort that I’m making into a rally car with my dad at the moment. He’s retired, but the car is keeping him busy. I went to this old Ford show and was just like, “I need that.” The engine was a pile of shit, but I managed to drive it home. A friend behind me had to pull over at a service station on the way home and wipe off the windscreen because it was leaking oil all the way down. I told my girlfriend, “If things get tight, I’ll sell