About Richard Burns
Richard Alexander Burns (17 January 1971 – 25 November 2005) was an English rally driver who won the 2001 World Rally Championship, having previously finished runner-up in the series in 1999 and 2000. He also helped Mitsubishi to the world manufacturers' title in 1998, and Peugeot in 2002. His co-driver in his whole career was Robert Reid. He is the only Englishman to have won the World Rally Championship as a driver. == Career == === Pre-WRC === Burns was born in Reading, Berkshire, and grew up in Checkendon, Oxfordshire. At the age of eight, he first started driving his father's old Triumph 2000 in a field near their house. At eleven Burns joined the Under 17 Car Club, where he became driver of the year in 1984. Just two years later, his father arranged a trip to Jan Churchill's Welsh Forest Rally School near Newtown, Powys, where Burns drove a Ford Escort for the day, and from that moment on he knew what he wanted to do. Richard badgered his father into letting him join the Craven Motor Club, in his home town of Reading, where his talent was quickly spotted by David Williams, a rally enthusiast who would play a major role in Burns's early career. In 1988, he entered his first rallies in his own Talbot Sunbeam, but the car was too basic and slow to make much of an impression, so in 1989, he borrowed other competitors' machines to progress.
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