I knew when I was three or four that I wanted to race

Last updated 12:01, Sunday, 25 May 2008

My first school was Eaglesfield Paddle. I remember my dad got the Ford contract when I was there and that involved going to places like Kenya, Australia and New Zealand.

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Matthew Wilson with co-driver Scott Martin

So at about the age of 10 or 11, I remember being out of school quite a bit to go to those places. You couldn’t have got a better education of life.

Paddle was a brilliant school. I loved it. The headmaster – Rod Coy – made it. It was quite a sporty school as well. I played a lot of football and I was captain of the school football team.

My next school was Cockermouth. I really enjoyed it. It was such a massive culture shock moving up – you go from a 100-pupil school to one with 1,200.

I had a lot of time off when I was 15 and 16. Once I started racing I was away two or three days a week. It was quite an important time because I was doing GCSEs.

I just had to make sure that I kept myself up to date. The school gave me things to do at home. As long as I took the work in and showed them, they let me have the time off.

I know it sounds daft but I think I knew from the time I was three or four years old that I wanted to race. I didn’t want to do anything else.

The first time I drove I was seven. It was just at home where we have quite a lot of land. When I was eight or nine we bought an old scrap car and I never looked back.

But there was always the chance that I would never make it [rallying] at the highest level and make a job out of it. My parents encouraged me to do my school work to make sure I had a back up.

That’s why I did carry on and try A levels because if I got to 24 and realised it was not going to happen, then I could still go to university.

Sometimes I was working long hours at home, especially if I had two or three days off in the week. And if I didn’t catch up, mum and dad and the school wouldn’t let me go racing. It was a bit of a trade-off.

I really enjoyed languages. I took both French and German for GCSE. And I did PE as well which was quite sensible because of the fitness side. I have to do regular training, road biking and in the gym and also fell running, to keep fit for the driving.

I played football and a bit of rugby, and athletics. I competed in 100 metres at county level.

There was nothing I disliked. It was a brilliant school. We had a really good headmaster – Mike Wilde [who died of cancer in 2007].

They knew racing was what I wanted to do and they just allowed me to do it.

I was in hospital in Newcastle after my big accident in 2005. Mike was very ill at the time and he made time to come and see me in hospital. I will never forget that. He was a really good guy.

I don’t regret not going to university. I didn’t get my A levels completed. The accident happened at the time of the exams – I had two broken arms and a broken leg.

I had the choice of going back to resit them but then my rallying really took off and I went to the World Championship.

I had done two years’ work. I took history, business studies and PE A levels. It was a shame. But I knew it was a really crucial year for my rallying.

Who inspired me most? Well you couldn’t fail to be inspired by Mike Wilde; going through what he went through and still being at that school as much as he was. Most people would have been laid up at home but he was still putting the effort in.

But the rallying side of things came from my dad.

I would say to any young people who have a passion for something, stick in at school. You can never be sure it will work out.

Even though I was always determined to make it happen in rallying, if it didn’t I wanted to have a fall-back. So, whatever your goal, stick in at school.

Interview by Kath Smart