By 
All roads used to lead to Rome, but for Martin Brady they seem to have honed in on Omagh.
The Navan native’s love of rallying began in 1989 when a stage of the Circuit of Ireland started outside his home and the roar of two Fords driven by father and son, Jimmy and Colin McRae had him hooked.
Since then, he has moved to Letterkenny to study, back to Navan while he trained as a police officer with An Garda Síochána, to Galway after getting married to incredibly understanding wife Lisa, and now Omagh where he has been inextricably linked throughout his life, but particularly over the last 20-plus years.
Having had relatives in the Clanabogan area he was a regular visitor during his younger years, but that bond to Tyrone’s county town has only strengthened since he started competing in rallying.
From his early days in night navigation events while a student in Letterkenny where he was a regular in O’Boyce’s where he would frequently bump into the likes of Rory Kennedy, James Cullen, Seamus Leonard and occasionally Gordon Noble, he progressed to stage rallying where Omagh’s Kevin O’Kane proved a hugely influential figure, opening the door to a rewarding period competing in the USA, where he continues to excel today.
Since teaming up with O’Kane, there’s few drivers from Tyrone he hasn’t sat with. Strabane’s Martin, Jack and Gary Cairns, Castlederg’s Jonni McDaid, Omagh’s Niall McCullagh, Greencastle’s Mark Donnelly, Donaghmore’s Adrian Hetherington, Moy’s Frank Kelly, who went above and beyond to fix ‘Baby Blue’ overnight to win get Martin his third ever victory, Clady’s Aidan Wray, Alan Smyth, Ashley, Ian, Stephen and Jason Dickson from Drumquin, have all been guided by his expert hand, as have Fermanagh’s Stephen Baxter, Timothy and Richard Cathcart, Garry Jennings, Alastair Fisher and current World Rally Championship driver, Jon Armstrong.
It’s been a hugely successful and rewarding journey for Brady, who now calls Omagh home, although it hasn’t been without drama and excitement.
He performed his own version of ‘The Great Escape’ from hospital to race in the 2011 Fivemiletown Rally – finishing third overall with Greencastle’s Mark Donnelly in the process – before getting back in time for an operation to get his gallbladder removed thanks to ever-supportive wife Lisa who left a car for him at the hospital entrance, while a fellow patient, who he remained in contact with via text, told several tall tales to the nurses on duty, including saying Martin had gone to Mass, to buy him time!
And also that year, he competed in Canada with two broken feet after a crash in the Black River Stages Rally near New York. Having suffered the injuries on the Friday night in America, Martin flew home on crutches but being second in the Canadian Championship, he, despite being unable to walk, flew back across the Atlantic in a bid to win that title three days later! With no laces in his boots because his feet were so swollen and taking plenty of painkillers to make competing possible, Martin and ‘Crazy Leo’ finished third at the Pacific Forest Rally.
Despite having many ups and downs and having competed in over 600 rallies, covering around 32,000 stage miles since making his debut in 2000 alongside Michael Cooper in a Ford Sierra Cosworth at the Dunlop Rally of Ireland, Brady’s passion and a love for the sport has only grown and developed.
As well as being meticulous in everything he does – from keeping a detailed record of each of his own events, which he has ensured are detailed on the eWRC website, to preparing for rallies – the 46 year-old has a ‘nerdy’ obsession about rallying and he has been able to forge a career out of it thanks to his forensic attention to detail which has led him to become one of, if not THE busiest co-driver in Ireland.
“At Sligo [2025] I crossed 600 rallies and that puts me in the top five world-wide,” he beamed. “On record, the most in Ireland, but I’d say, not trying to be a glory hunter, Mickey Joe Morrissey would have more over so many years competing and I’d say the likes of Rory [Kennedy] and maybe Gordy [Gordon Noble] would be missing quite a few on their [eWRC profile’s] so I’d say they have more but I know my numbers are right because I got a piece of good advice when I started rallying many years ago. Someone said to keep a record of what you do because you’ll forget.
“I started to keep road books of every rally but we needed an extension for that! I was just always a nerd [about it].”
Although he immediately caught the bug for rallying after hearing the McRae’s Ford’s on the limiter outside his house back in 1989, it took a significant amount of time before Martin actually got involved as a competitor.
It wasn’t until he moved to Letterkenny to study at LYIT that he sat in the passenger seat for the first time during a few night navigation events.
On his debut, he competed alongside Gavin Harris but halfway round the route, Gavin’s brother Paul jumped into the back seat – completely against the rules – to guide them with some vital inside information!
In the end, they finished as joint winners, although Martin admits ‘we weren’t really winners at all’.
That experience just fuelled his taste for the sport and after another memorable experience in a Toyota Corrolla with a driver who ‘wasn’t listening’ as he was ‘just out for a cut’, he eventually progressed to stage rallying and following that he he has proved true to his word: “After that I did as many as I could as often as I could!,” he said.
That decision to be as busy as possible proved fruitful and in 2014 he got the chance to ditch his Garda uniform for a race suit full-time when he was approached to co-drive for Chinese competitor Song Tingwu in America.
Fortunately Martin’s wife Lisa was and is more than happy for her husband to chase his dream and they decided he should take six months off and give it a go – and now, 12 years later he’s delighted they did.
“It was [Lisa] who said ‘take a chance, you can take six months off and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work but try it and see’,” he explained. “So I decided to try it and see and I took six months off work and I never went back, I have been doing something in motorsport every year since.
“I’ve been very, very lucky.”
But Martin admits, that particular opportunity possibly would never happened had it not been for what he learned and the experience gained with Omagh’s O’Kane, who he credits as a massive influence on not only his co-driving, but his career.
“The US, in particular has been very good to me, but how I got started in the US was – one of the drivers who made the biggest difference to me in bringing me on, taking me under his wing, teaching me and tutoring me really good habits was Kevin O’Kane,” he explained. “Kevin was quite gruff on the phone when I first spoke to him. He said ‘Young fella, Stan Harper says you can co-drive, so be at such a rally at such a time and I’ll see you there’.
“Kevin and I did I don’t know how many rallies and he taught me so much. He was so particular about analysing notes from previous years, learning from that.
“OK, when I sat with him he was in the twilight of his career, on the wind down, but the effort was always there. I’d have come to Omagh to watch videos with him the night before a rally, I was very much treated like one of the family. He was very good to me.
“But little things and bits and pieces that he taught me. He was such a fierce competitor, but out of the car, such a gentleman.”
It was O’Kane’s recommendation to Seamus Burke that opened the door for Martin to become a regular competitor in America and subsequently Canada.
“When Seamus Burke needed someone in America it was [Kevin O’Kane’s] recommendation that had me away,” Martin explained. “And by the same token, Seamus Burke had so many years competing and such a level of respect out there that if you’re seen to be having success with him or sit with him, it’s an endorsement and all of a sudden I started having drivers looking for me.”
Through rallying and in particular teaming up with Kyle Tilly, who he competed in the Roger Albert Clark Rally in November of last year, Martin has enjoyed experiences outside that motorsport discipline.
Tilly, a native of Bath in England, is a renowned driver, who has raced in NASCAR and at the Le Mans 24 Hours, has not only hired Brady as a rally co-driver for events in America, but also as a spotter at the famous Daytona 24 Hour race.
“I mentioned to him that spotters at Rallycross and in NASCAR and so on is something I’d like to try some time,” Martin explained. “I was thinking rallycross because as a co-driver, it’s something I thought co-driving would lend itself to rather than [circuit] racing because I don’t understand it.
“But then he rang me up and asked if I’d like to come to the Daytona 24 Hours as a spotter and it’s the only thing ever in motorsport I was terrified of!
“You’re on the roof of the stand, so you can see all the track but at night, which car is yours? The driver can’t see, there’s P2 hyper cars,P3s, which look the same as P2s but are slower and pro-ams like Porsche 911s and touring cars, all these different levels of abilities.
“But I think because I’d rallied with Kyle it was easy to jump into the language with him, to let him know what was happening around him. To learn the race craft was quite a big thing for me, but because I could speak to him, I didn’t have to have all the lingo, he’d understand, so it worked well.
“And then he took me to NASCAR to do it for him as well.”
Alongside his regular trips across the Atlantic, Martin remained busy in Ireland and Britain, but with so much of his work revolving around Tyrone-based competitors, he and Lisa, who works in publishing, decided Omagh was their ideal base, particularly after Irvinestown’s ‘Mr Miyagi’ of rallying, Gerry McGarrity, put him in touch with Drumquin’s Dickson family.
“Gerry was so good to me, it was him who put me in with the Dickson’s first, he put me in with Stephen when he was starting out,” he explained.
“That was 2010 and here we are 2025 [at time of interview], I’m living in Omagh, renting a house from the Dickson’s and still co-driving for them.
“I’d have sat with Stephen for a lot of years, I’d have sat with Ashley [Stephen’s dad] and Gerry put me in with Jason [Stephen’s brother] and we just clicked.
“Jason is one of the people I get into the car with and there’s not any stress, a lot can go unspoken, we gel very well together and I enjoy very much sitting with him.
“Being based in Omagh now makes it very easy, I can nip over to the office and we can go over our notes or we can make our plans in the boardroom over lunch.
“But the longer we’re here, Omagh is becoming more and more like home. We’re very happy here.”
