The Pro Auto Approach To Barbadian Motorsport

Brett Judd is one of the most recognizable characters in local motorsport who doesn't sit behind the wheel or call pace notes. That doesn't make him any less competitive or driven, mind you. For close to two decades he has engineered (pardon the pun) success for his clients on both Sunday speed events and Sol Rally Barbados. We caught up with Brett at his workshop at Pro Auto Works to learn a bit more about the man and his mission.

Brett's story begins halfway around the world...New Zealand to be exact. "I left New Zealand when I was 21. I had been fortunate to work with a rally team that came to New Zealand and I was invited to Austria to help them out and stay as long as I wanted. They then took me to England and I got involved with a company called Mike Taylor Developments, which was building the Ford Escort Group N and Group A cars at the time - before the World Rally Championship became official. This would have been around 1992. After a year at Mike Taylor's I left and went to Prodrive. I started there as a mechanic in the customer car department. I spent three months there and then transferred to the transmission department. I then spent the rest of my time at Prodrive - some six and a half years, working on the transmissions solely for the Subaru World Rally Team, which was Prodrive's contracted client. In those 6 years, I had access to the technology of the transmission obviously but I also learned a lot just being around the team and being fortunate enough to work on the cars. I did a lot of testing with them. Most of the last few years I was there I did all of the testing with them, with the development of the paddleshift gearbox, I was fortunate to be able to work on the cars and the transmissions through all my travels with the team on World Championship rallies from 1995 right through to 2000. In March 2000, I packed my bags again. I had the opportunity to come to Barbados with Paul Bourne, who at the time bought a Subaru. It wasn't a factory car and he spent about six or seven months struggling with the car. With the knowledge that I had, we ended up going and getting the first World Rally Car to be driven by a local. Paul was very successful with it and people looked on and saw what we had done. Shortly after, Roger Skeete got a World Rally Car, so too did Roger Mayers and that's how- in my opinion, the seeds for factory cars were planted in Barbados."

Since coming to Barbados, Brett has been influential in getting drivers to acquire factory machinery. This isn't just limited to World Rally Cars either. Why the emphasis on factory built cars? "Well, the main reason would be reliability. I quickly realized that Barbados was a place where it would be very difficult to develop a car. In my time at Subaru I saw the time, effort and money that are put into these cars. Although that may sound expensive, for what you get, it is very cheap in perspective. Over the eighteen years that I've been in Barbados, I've worked really hard to convince a lot of the other top drivers that his route is the way to go: John Powell, Jeffrey Panton. We've been fortunate to see the rally grow and this has given us the chance to look after some of the overseas competitors that bring their cars over. Gary Gregg is another driver who we've helped and looked after the car for a little while. We've basically helped drivers to see the light and also see that this is where I felt the future of the sport would go from our level of rallying. We've always understood that motorsport has three budget levels: there should always be low budget motorsport, medium budget motorsport and large budget motorsport. It's like that around the world, so why should it be any different in the Caribbean or Barbados? My vision when I first came out to Barbados was to set up this company, Pro Auto Works, employ Barbadian staff and just provide a business for the direction in which I thought the sport was heading.”

Having established Pro Auto Works in the market and seeing it grow over the years, how many cars is the company responsible for right now? "We run at least seven or eight cars for customers full-time: Dane Skeete, Rob Swann and Jeffrey Panton - when Rob and Jeff's cars are here. Jeffrey has been with us for five years and in that time the only time the car has left is to compete in other events, so we've been doing the full preparation on his car. Stan Hartling and his two sons - one in Citroen C2 and the other in a Bimma Cup car, Pierre Beswick and Stuart Maloney. We also help other customers who aren't with us full-time, and that's just the rallying side. Over the last few years we've worked closely with Bushy Park. We prepared all of the Suzuki Swifts for the Swift Cup Series. We built all of the cars with a combination of Simpson Motors and Pro Auto Works. We also ran the cars for the three years that the series took place. Since the series has finished, we've moved over to the Radicals. This year we are running pretty much all of the Bushy Park Radicals- the rentals as well as the Maloney Squad." With so much work to be done, a dedicated and competent team is essential. The size of the team is crucial as well. Just how does Pro Auto Works get it done? "We have two full-time employees- one whom we brought through the Technical Vocational Training Board as an apprentice. The reason for that was up until this year, we were doing maybe 60% motorsport and 40% basic road car work- servicing and so on. We've moved away from that to fully concentrate on motorsport, which does take more time. I don't want to build the company too big, because then it becomes difficult to control the overall product." As you would imagine, when Sol Rally Barbados rolls around, the number of hands on deck increases quite a bit. "When it comes to rally, the team goes from three people to sometimes upwards of thirty-five people. Half of that number, some of the teams bring in sometimes as specialists: engineering, data acquisition, car set up - basically people who are very knowledgeable about the cars. We can let them just do their thing. The other half would be Barbadians that come and help us. We assign them to cars and they work with the overseas teams and help out." With a service park or a workshop being a hive of activity during events, how does the team at Pro Auto Works keep all of its customers happy? "We provide an equal product for everybody. Each car gets the same attention. We prepare each car as best we can. We try not to leave someone to last and make them feel like they're left behind and didn't get what they wanted. This leads back to our focus solely on the motorsport side of things because having that many cars requires a lot pr preparation and a lot of forward thinking - because we need to source parts from overseas, it's an astronomical amount of work. We even provide food and drinks- the entire catering side of it, so that customers can just arrive and drive. The main thing is to have a team that gets along well and are passionate about what they do. When you have people who are happy and are passionate about what they do, it makes things easier and they work harder."

If you paid close attention to the cars run full-time by Brett and his team (most notably between 2018 and this year), you'd realize a trend: there has been a shift to factory cars. What is the thought process behind this? "I do prefer to work on factory cars. Don't get me wrong, I like the development of a car, but if you're running seven or eight development cars I'd more than likely be dead. The stress that the drivers go through, the stress that the team goes through when things break is tremendous. We're not in a position to be developing cars. The amount of money it costs to develop a car to the point where it's successful is a lot more than people think. Not everybody has the insight to go to a factory team and see how many times they build something and it breaks. You never hear that part of the story. You just see the car on TV and it runs all day long- you never see the real picture. I was fortunate to see the real picture, and for what we do it suits us. To say I disagree with people who want to develop a car? By no means. I think it's a huge part of the sport in Barbados. People should be able to develop their own cars and showcase their natural talents. We have some extremely fast cars that have been built out of garages in Barbados and they're extremely well built, but that's okay when you're running just one car. When we finish the Saturday portion of Rally Barbados and we have seven cars to check through, it takes us all night to do that. If we have seven cars that break down, we wouldn't have enough time to finish all seven cars. So we've based more around the business model of let's get these guys in good cars, not only for our company but for our customers' enjoyment as well. They're doing the sport for fun at the end of the day. Nobody likes to break down, it's no fun breaking part after part. It doesn't suit what we do. I'm happy - it's taken me a good number of years to convince some of these guys that we now have as customers to use factory cars. All we have to do is maintain them. That puts more importance on us too to maintain them correctly because things shouldn't break on them but things will break on them. I see that as a challenge because now we're testing ourselves to prove that we can maintain these cars. It's just as hard to maintain them as it is to develop a car due to small budgets. Fortunately for me I've got some guys that understand that and have put certain things in place that we have a lot of what we need. We learn as we go along. It's a lot easier.”

In 2019 the R5 class was fully ratified by the Barbados Rally Club. Initially this class was supposed to replace WRC at the pinnacle of the groups. That notion has been shelved (thankfully, I might add) and now R5 sits as the second tier. How does Brett view the introduction of and subsequent upsurge in R5 group? “I think what’s happened is in line with that usually occurs: the competitors dictate what happens. Most people don’t like things being forced down their throat, it normally makes them choke and die. A few years ago when there was the notion to ban the older generation of World Rally Cars, it was a pointless argument from my point of view. We don’t run to guidelines that define what you have to do. The club makes a class, and competitors bring the best cars that they can to win that class. Why the sudden uptake in entries? The main reason is the economy has gotten better. Nothing happens without that…even when you look at the situation that we’re faced with now. I believe there were rules that could have been put in place from the WRC class point of view with the cars running together. However, we don’t follow the international rules closely enough. We don’t stick to the guidelines closely enough and everyone wants to put their piece of their pie in and we end up with a jumbled up soup that doesn’t taste like pie anymore. That’s the biggest threat to what we’re doing. If we had stable, worldwide regulated rules, the top classes in rallying would be better off. I think that’s what R5 is going to bring us. They are stringently regulated, they are built in a manner that is even and fair regardless of manufacturer or year. Nobody can go and buy a car that’s three years newer and it’s three years faster. That’s what I like about it and I believe most of the competitors like that as well. There are some, however, that won’t like that. That’s because if you can buy something to make you faster, those who can afford it will. That’s like a cancer to our sport. When we campaigned Paul Horton’s R3 Citroen, which was a regulated, purpose-built spec car, initially when we held discussions about buying it we knew it wasn’t going to be the fastest car. We chose to attack it from the reliability point of view. The first year he drove it, he won his class for the first time in all the years that he’d been competing here. So we proved a point: you don’t necessarily have to have the fastest car. It needs to be reliable. At the end of it all, R5 is here. I think Andy Scott played a big part in that, because of his results in Sol Rally Barbados. When he initially contacted me to find out which car I thought that he should bring, I told him if you want to win you need a WRC car and if you want to finish in the top ten you need an R5 car. To bring something that’s homebuilt, you could finish or you could not finish. With either the R5 or the WRC you should finish. He finished third overall in an R5 car. You don’t have to have the fastest car- it helps, but you need a reliable car and a faster driver.”

With Covid-19 stretching its tentacles throughout the world, Barbados has felt its impact. With what was shaping up to be the best season of rallying ever, the optimism and excitement were brought to a screeching halt. Brett remains undaunted, choosing to look on the brighter side. “Well, there’s nothing that we can do about it. What’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen, I don’t know. We will survive one way or another. It will have an impact on us obviously, especially with the decision to move the company up to Bushy Park and working with Bushy Park, not only has it affected the rallying side but the circuit racing aspect as well. It will affect people’s budgets as well. They won’t have the same amount of money to put into the sport. We’ll get through it. I believe that there’s always another Rally Barbados: if you break down, it will come around next year. We need to find a way of keeping the staff, especially when you have a guy like Richie who’s been with us for 10 or 12 years now. He’s an integral part of the business. We’ve got some trying times and the guys that own the cars have some trying times ahead as well. I don’t think we should postpone Rally Barbados. If it’s safe to drive the cars and everything else is as it should be, I think it should come off. There’s no guarantee that persons will be able to come later in the year. If they do get full commitment from the overseas competitors that they can come later in the year, that would be great. If not, we’ll just make a bigger comeback next year.”

Red265 would like to say a huge thanks to Brett Judd for taking the time to talk to us and to him and his team at Pro Auto Works for the invaluable contribution they have made to the island’s motorsport product. We’d also like to urge each and every one of you to be safe as we deal with the impact of Covid-19. This situation is no joke and we’d love it to come out as unscathed as possible. Stay tuned to our social media for more updates and exclusives.