MCRAES DRIVE MCRAE’S ICONS
THE ULTIMATE FAMILY GET TOGETHER
There’s a little bit of pushing, a little bit of shoving, but in the end Jimmy comes out smiling. The other two look a little miffed. But there’s no shifting the father – and grandfather – of rallying’s greatest dynasty.
We’re in Rheola forest in Wales and have gathered three generations of the Mcrae family and three cars that helped bring that family name to prominence.
British Rally champions Jimmy and Alister Mcrae, father and brother respectively of 1995 World Rally champion Colin, are well-known in rallying circles. But what about
Max? Max is Mcrae Jr Jr: Alister’s 15-year-old son.
With the boys all out to play, Mrs Mcrae has come along to keep an eye on them.
Margaret raises an eyebrow at the scene before her. The three of them are finally ready for the picture. Her husband, the five-time British Rally champion, is standing on the biggest rock. Looking down on the other two.
“Oh, he would be, wouldn’t he…” she says, smiling the smile of one who sees his sort of patriarchal locking of horns on a regular basis. Jimmy’s grin gets a bit wider.
The cars – owned by rallying philanthropist Steve Rimmer – are all from Colin’s career. And they’re all things of absolute beauty.
There’s the Subaru Legacy RS he used to finish second on the 1992 Swedish Rally; an Impreza WRC from Argentina five years later and his Ford Focus RS WRC 01 from the 2001 Sanremo Rally.
The plan is a simple one: drive the cars, make some memories and remember the legend.
Odd as it sounds, this is the right wrong week to do it. We’ve gathered just days on from the 12th anniversary of a day when the rallying world darkened, when Colin died in a helicopter crash. But being here, being in the woods with cars that will be forever Colin’s cars and being privileged enough to be among his family felt like it brought him closer again.
Looking back with these cars was inevitable, but the day was also very much about looking forward to the future of the Mcrae story. Is Max that future? It’s too early to say, but the signs are looking very, very good.
Max’s arrival into Rheola was rock and roll – especially for a 15-year-old. He’d gone from 120mph in a Radical race car at Barbagallo, north of Perth to 17h45m at 550mph aboard a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner from Western Australia direct to Heathrow. Landing as the sun said good morning to west London, he was whisked directly down the M4, slinging a right onto the A470 towards Merthyr Tydfil and then west once more into Walters Arena.
In just over 24 hours he’d gone from the other side of the world to the driving seat of uncle Colin’s Subaru Impreza WRC97.
Jet lag? Not a chance. Not when you’ve got the chance to step inside one of the most beautiful rally cars ever created.
“It does look good, doesn’t it,” says Alister. “You wouldn’t think it was 20 years old.”
There’s very little difference between today’s car and the one Alister used to come closest to victory on a WRC round. Alister joined Colin at Subaru for the 1998 RAC Rally and was running in a comfortable second going into the final day. When…
“I forget the name of the stage [St. Gwynno], but the fog was really bad,” recalls Alister. “We had a problem with the lights, they were cutting in and out. We came out of the twisty bit and the last part of the road was really quick. The lights were still going on and off, so I just turned them off. I must have just got slightly off line in the fast stuff and there was a log in a ditch. That flicked the car and it barrel rolled into oblivion. That was the end of that one. It’s a shame – compared to the cars around it, that was the best I ever drove.”
Alister’s voice trails away as Jimmy wanders over to join us watching Max climb aboard the blue Subaru.
“I can’t believe he’s getting in there to drive that,” Alister grumbles. “What was I driving at 15? Eh Pops? What did I get? I got a run around the field in a van… That’s not fair.”
Laughing at him doesn’t help, but the mood lightens when he remembers escaping the field and making for the loose in a Sunbeam.
Alister says: “I’d got hold of a Talbot Sunbeam, I’d got it out the scrappy, welded up the diff and got on with it.
I was 15 and Colin had just started driving [on the road, aged 17].
“I’d got the Sunbeam up and running and we stuck it on the trailer. The pair of us were looking around for straps to tie it down – in the end we got a wee bit of rope on the front of it. I was looking at it and said to Colin, ‘That gonna be all right, Col?’ ‘Aye Al, be fine. No bother. Fine.’
“It was my pride and joy. I’d been in the garage working on it for three months. Anyway, Dad knew this guy who had a quarry where we could take it to drive and that was where we were heading.
The quarry was at the top of a hill, so when we turned off the main road I said, ‘Right Col, come on let’s take it off the trailer and I’ll drive it in’. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Don’t be stupid. It’ll be fine!’
“We drove all the way up this long, long hill, stopped and just as he said,
‘Get the gate’, he looked in the mirror and said: ‘Oh…’ I looked around and I could see the car slowly rolling off the trailer. I got out and there’s me sprinting after it. I just got to the door and thought, ‘Nah’.
“It went into the rock of Gibraltar; smash, boom! And, of course, I’m just standing there looking at it and Colin, being Colin, he gets out, walks over and says, ‘That’s f **** d, Al’. That was it. Nothing else. Just that.
“We dragged it up into the quarry anyway and drove it like complete hooligans. After that, remember the Avenger that Colin borrowed to do his first rally? That shell ended up being completely knackered, so I took it, stripped it out and rebuilt the Sunbeam parts into that for that winter’s season racing around the field. That was me at 15.
“And look at him, getting into a Subaru World Rally Car!”
Max gives the flat-four just a few more revs. Just to make sure he can’t hear his Dad grumbling as he climbs in alongside.
Then they’re away. Leaving a big, wide open gravel area, Max gives it a few more revs to build some boost, while putting some lock on to get the car sliding. He looks like he’s warming the tyres, but actually, he’s living a dream.
Margaret starts busying herself with making a cup of tea, while Jimmy’s grin couldn’t get any wider.
“He was out with me this morning,” he says. “We were in the Legacy.
“It’s great to have him here in this environment. He doesn’t get any of this at home in Australia.”
Did he enjoy the ride?
“I think so, but I didn’t get the chance to look at him – I was concentrating too hard on the driving. I didn’t want to miss a gear. He might have given me that look.”
With that, the Impreza flies into view over the famous crest that leads down to the famous lake. Margaret stirs the tea with a little more vigour and focus.
Jim laughs: “He’s certainly getting into the swing of that thing.”
A few more laps and the Impreza’s back. Finally, Margaret can enjoy her tea.
The verdict from Alister? “A bit nervewracking,” he says. “I asked him a couple of times if he had any idea how much that car’s worth! It was fine, but you just never
know if there’s a rock sticking out or something – it’s so easy to damage one of these cars, especially when you’re driving it on a proper stage like this.”
The verdict from Jimmy? “I was very impressed, especially given that the fastest rally car he’s driven before this is a fairly standard Citroen C2,” he says. “Alister was over at ours for Christmas last year, so between then and New Year we went away up to Knockhill to give him a wee run. In the end he did the same distance as two Scottish Championship rounds – the poor guy from Knockhill came over and said, ‘Is there any chance he might be finished soon? We’ve a medic here and he’s got to go.’ He would have been there all night going around the track and the rallyschool stage.”
Max, his pillow and his cushion have already exited the Impreza. They’re hunting down a new home, with the Legacy looking most likely.
“The noise was amazing,” says Max. “And when it came on boost, the torque and power – that took a bit of getting used to. Dad was great, he didn’t tell me to slow down, he just kept telling me how expensive the car is!”
Today is definitely a day of sounds as well as sights. The sight, if we’re honest, is a little incongruous. The temperature’s in the mid-20s and the sun dominates a cloudless sky. This is not how we remember Rheola.
The sounds are like that classic track that take you back to a magic moment.
Except the Impreza WRC97. The noise is sensational, with that harsher edged tone, but it’s what that noise came to mean.
“Aye, that noise probably cost us a championship,” says Jimmy. He’s not wrong. Continued engine issues – mainly centred on the cambelt – cancelled out Mcrae’s five 1997 wins. He missed a second title by a single point to Tommi Makinen that year.
Talking of missing titles, four years on and another one was dropped just over the hill from here in the Rhondda stage, when Colin rolled spectacularly out of the lead. And the championship. Ironically, a couple of days after passing that destroyed Focus, Alister finished a career-best fourth in a Hyundai
Accent WRC.
“The Focus is a good car,” says Alister. “It’s quick and really nice to drive and a bit quicker than the Legacy.”
The Legacy was where Mcraes Colin and Alister really started to move on up. Alister got a Group A car for the 1993 British Rally Championship, while Colin took his first WRC win in New Zealand in another Prodrive-built Legacy RS.
“You just get the feeling when you get into the Legacy, it’ll go forever,” he says. “It was always a really strong car – and that noise. OK, the Impreza is shorter, more compact and there was more development in the engine and gearbox.”
Max chips in: “You have to be really precise with the gearbox on the Legacy. But maybe that’s because it’s a left-hand drive and we only have right-hand drive in Australia.”
Alister offers the slightly withering look only a parent can manage. “That’s because you’re used to sitting in the middle… of a go-kart,” he says. “Handbrake works though,” Max grins. Max is gone again, this time showing Gramps how to drive.
“It’s great being able to bring him here,” says Alister. “You look at lads like [Kalle] Rovanpera or Oliver [Solberg] and they’re totally immersed in this world. Max doesn’t see any of this.
To give him a glimpse into what we did and where we did it is fantastic.”
Nothing, not even a head several time zones away, is enough to dim Max’s enthusiasm. As the end of the day nears, he’s still walking among the cars with a look of absolute wonder.
This really is half a world away from chasing a season in Formula 1000 back home.
“I just want to drive,” he says. “I really want to go into rallying, but if it’s racing I don’t mind. It’s tough at home, we don’t have the chances to go rallying like you do in Europe, but I’ll keep practising on private roads. I really look up to Oliver [Solberg], he’s not that much older than me, but he’s so quick in a car and he’s really good at all that PR stuff.”
But for now, maybe it’s game time again. But which game?
“DIRT,” Max fires back, quick as a flash and loyal as ever to uncle Colin. “Always DIRT.”
And with that, the day’s driving is done. Mission accomplished, memories made.