Alister McRae has coached drivers who could win rallies yet still couldn't get a the seat the wanted. That's the part of the job nobody warns you about.

Sport is sold as a meritocracy. Be quick, get noticed, move up. It works that way in the junior motorsport categories for a while, and then it stops working, and a lot of drivers don't notice it has stopped until they're a good few seasons into paying hefty amounts for their drives with nothing to show.

The reason is simple. A driver or rider is a commercial proposition before they're a sporting one. A team is deciding between two competitors of similar pace - and the one who arrives with a sponsor, a big social media following and the ability to talk to a room full of people is going to get the seat. That isn't unfair. It's the economics of motorsport.

Which means the work is in three places, and pace is only one of them.

The driving or riding comes first and it's not negotiable. But alongside it there's preparation: knowing how to give feedback that a team can use, understanding the engineering conversation, being physically able to do the job for a full season. And there's the commercial side: how you present to a sponsor, how you handle a bad weekend in front of a camera, how you explain what you do to somebody who has never watched a rally stage in their life.

That third one gets skipped constantly. Drivers and riders practice their starts. Almost nobody practises walking into a room of potential sponsors and being interesting for twenty minutes.

If you're a motorsport competitor reading this the honest question to ask yourself is: can you do all three well?

If you can't, it isn't a talent problem and it isn't a funding problem.

It's a training gap - and gaps can be closed with hard work.