How Grist and his notes helped McRae to a Safari Rally hat-trick
Colin McRae won the Safari Rally three times with his 25th and final WRC career win coming on the 2002 event.
Organisers of the Safari’s return are promising a mixture of high average speeds and sections that will have to be negotiated at walking pace, a significant variation that the legendary Scot, armed with his Safari special pacenote system, would have lapped up.
That’s according to Nicky Grist, the man who helped develop the notes and called them out impeccably to ensure there were also British Safari wins in 1997 and 1999.
“Winning the first Safari with Colin in 1997 was probably the more memorable because I worked with him on a whole-new pacenote system, specifically for the Safari to help us get through the intricacies of the roughness of the event,” Grist recalls. “We worked during the test, chopped and changed a few things and added this whole-new pacenote system and we won our first Safari Rally together in 1997. That was a big turning point and it was surprising how that pacenote system stayed with Colin over the years. He turned all the rougher rallies into his strongest events.
“There was a pacenote system to go as fast as you possibly can and then there was a pacenote system that allowed you to travel as fast as you possibly could but slow enough to clear a specific section without damaging the car. That was key.
“Malcolm [Wilson] reckoned the 1999 win – the first Ford Focus win – was probably Colin’s greatest win because we won by 14 minutes without winning a single section, which was the perfect scenario back then although you won’t have that now.
“We worked at this system that was also about staying patient and accepting you are going to lose time but also, on the other hand, knowing that somewhere along the route you’re going to be more or less there when other people would be getting into trouble and falling by the wayside with a mechanical breakdown for some reason. But that was the balance you had to strike.”
Of his role in the McRae Safari legend, Grist is modest. “It was just part of the job really. I went there with Colin having learned from working with a very experienced Safari competitor in Juha Kankkunen, who had so many Safaris over the years and other events like the Ivory Coast, some really tough events.”