3 December 2025 / By David Ferguson
One name has been synonymous with Scottish rallying success across the past decade and more and this weekend’s Coppermines Grizedale Stages will represent something of a lap of honour, even if the man himself does not quite see it that way.
Dumfries man David Bogie is now 38 with a young family, but he can recall clearly his first competitive venture in a rally car, and it was the very same rally, 21 years ago, in a Vauxhall Nova. Since then, he has won seven Scottish Rally Championships, including the 2025 title, and a British Championship, and while he has this year’s trophy secured there will be no letting up as he aims to help his co-driver, Kirsty Riddick, to her own piece of history.
She didn’t start the season with Bogie, but after his long-time co-driver, Irishman John Rowan, decided to take a break after they won the Speyside she agreed to join her childhood friend in the car – the pair having had a successful outing last year in the RSAC Scottish Rally. Now, having manoeuvred a shortened championship with its fair share of challenges, they set off in the no1 car with Kirsty hoping to become the first woman to win the SRC co-driver title twice with fellow Scots Jane Nicol and Ann Wood the only other females to have collected the trophy. She needs a finish in the top seven at Coniston to make sure.
‘Co-drivers deserve the same credit as drivers’
“That would be a brilliant way for us to finish the year,” said David. “We grew up together and have always been hugely into our rallying, so it would be great to both end the season as champions.
“I’ve always been a big supporter of the SRC – fantastic events, fantastic roads and great people – so I’m as proud to win my seventh title as I was to win my first. It’s been special having Kirsty in the car this year as well. We won the Scottish Rally last year, so it wasn’t entirely new when she stepped in for John, but she has just done a great job; very professional in and out of the car.
“It’s not easy to slip in with someone else and just click, the trust has to be there from the start, but I’ve been very lucky with my co-drivers right back to my first rallies with David Paterson. Co-drivers deserve the same amount of credit as drivers because you can’t win without both being strong, and Kirsty is very experienced at being with quick drivers and quick machinery.”
Different man and different driver
Bogie says he is a different man and driver to that of the youngster who followed his father John into the sport in his teens, and, while he takes a year-by-year approach to championship decisions as family and work commitments take greater precedence, there is little doubting his ability to remain one of Scottish motorsport’s most consistent performers.
“That is probably what I’d say is the big difference between me as a driver now, and me as a driver when I won my first SRC in 2009 – consistency,” he says.
“I’m certainly more experienced as a driver and overall, and one of the things that comes with experience is knowing where you can push, where you can’t. When I started, like most drivers, I was flat-out all the time, and I’d say that a lack of consistency was my downfall in some championships.
“This year hasn’t been easy with the Snowman being called off at the start and the Jim Clark being cut short because of the death of a great co-driver, which hits everyone in the sport pretty hard. So, it’s been shorter than we expected, but every rally brings its own challenges.
“Grizedale is going to be another tough one, and there are so many good crews and cars out there that you can never expect to win, but if we could seal the championship for Kirsty that would be fantastic.”
Grizedale primed for exciting finale
This will be Bogie’s fifth outing at the Grizedale Stages, his last in the Furness District Motor Club event coming way back in 2007 – and that ended with him winning in a Subaru Impreza S9 WRC with Kevin Rae on the notes.
The Grizedale Forest has endured a rocky road from its days making life tough for World Rally Championship crews on the Lombard RAC Rally in the 1980s and 90s, to the event we know now, started by Chris and Myra Huddlestone in 1988. Snow forced a cancellation in 2010, the Covid pandemic ruled it out in 2020, Storm Arwen in 2021 and snow forced abandonment in 2023.
This year the forecast is for light rain but nothing to worry the organisers for the relatively short course.
Matthew Wilson, Guy Wilks and Mark Higgins join Bogie as previous winners, and for the Scot there is no better way to finish the year than flying round forests – albeit back in the VW Polo GTi R5 that won last year’s Scottish Rally, rather than the Skoda Fabia that has trumped all-comers and taken him to SRC victories in the McDonald & Munro Speyside Stages, the RSAC Scottish, Voly Grampian Forest and Armstrong Galloway Hills in 2025. Some things never change, however, as he will still be on the Pirelli tyres that have helped keep him tight to the pace.
As for whether Scotland’s top rally driver of recent times might be tempted to switch places with Kirsty, and have a shot at navigating, in the future, his answer is as sharp as his driving: “Not a chance! Way too scary.”