‘Rallying is very much about your attitude ... and Colin found a way to triumph during what was a spectacular era for the sport’
ALLAN McNISH SALUTES THE LEGEND OF FORMER WORLD CHAMPION COLIN McRAE
AQUARTER of a century on, the memories are indelibly imprinted on the minds of all who watched Colin McRae, master of the impossible, fulfil his destiny.
The first Briton to win the World Rally Championship and a proud member of Scotland’s tight-knit motorsport community, McRae’s legend lives on. And rightly so.
As a member of one of the great driving dynasties — his dad was five-time British Rally Champion Jimmy — he was always destined to succeed behind the wheel of a car.
But what he did in 1995, taking on and beating some of the greatest competitors in a golden era for the sport, was truly remarkable.
And the way he did it? Well, that’s what explains the enduring appeal of the great man.
McRae was chosen as the face of his own instantly-popular video game, the first driver and one of the first sportsmen to be so honoured, because he had style. Flair. Attitude. Swagger.
Nobody drove quite like he did. Even his contemporaries in other branches of motorsport, men who know all about pushing cars beyond all known limits, still marvel at how he managed it.
Hurtling down forest tracks with barely a wing mirror’s margin of error on either side, tearing up mountain paths strewn with boulders, throwing the car from full lock left to full lock right in a heartbeat, changing gears at the rate of about one a second… he had the reactions of an alley cat.
Memory bank images of his car flying through the air or sliding gracefully around some hairpin bend, always seemingly on the brink of losing control, vie for prominence with replayed clips of those flips and rolls that tended to happen. From time to time.
He never seemed to think about driving conservatively to protect a position or secure points. That wasn’t in his make-up.
Maybe your favourite mental image, though, is of McRae stubbornly kicking his car or furiously hammering away at some twisted piece of undercarriage — anything to get the beast moving again. He was some man. Some character.
Allan McNish, a three-time Le Mans champion and former F1 driver who knows exactly how it feels to compete on the razor’s edge, retains the utmost admiration for a compatriot and friend who made it all look so easy. And so exhilarating.
‘It was a mentality thing with Colin,’ McNish told Sportsmail. ‘Comparing sports car racing or F1 to rallying is like comparing squash and tennis. They’re both racquet sports but they’re very, very different.
‘Rallying is very much about attitude. You are throwing a car around in a situation where you are always dancing on the edge of recovery.
‘Some of the spectacular pictures you have of Colin through his career, it never looked like the car was going in the correct direction but it was, in its own little way.
‘If you think of scenes from places like Finland and Sweden, with all the jumps, he had so much ability to control the throttle. He would control the flight of the car with the throttle pedal, which is amazing.
‘Honestly, when you see someone with Colin’s level of skill and talent, when it’s all so effortless, absolutely effortless, you know… “Yeah, okay, I’m good behind the wheel. But, in that scenario, would I match up? No way”.
‘He had a sense in his backside to tell him where the car was, what the angles were.
‘Most drivers in F1 or whatever, you go beyond a certain angle and you think: “Okay, nothing I can do now. This is going to be a shunt”.
‘For Colin, nothing was irrecoverable. That’s a different skill set, a different inner instinct.
‘It was absolutely spectacular to watch, in a spectacular era — with some spectacular drivers.
‘When Colin won it, it wasn’t a weak time period at all. It was an era when, to win, you had to be the best of the best. And the best of the best were absolutely stunning.’
That’s a point worth repeating. Looking closely at some of the drivers left trailing by McRae in 1995 elevates his achievement even further up the ranks of great Scottish sporting wins.
Subaru team-mate Carlos Sainz was a double world champion, Juha Kankkunen had won four world titles — and Tommi Makinen would also go on to win a quartet of World Rally crowns.
McRae’s ascent to the top of the podium was, famously, secured on ‘home’ soil.
Ripping through some muddy and madcap sections of Wales in the final stage of the RAC rally, an estimated two million spectators lined the route — including a lone piper, naturally — to cheer the Scot home. And then he was given an uproarious reception during the prize-giving ceremony at Chester Race Course.
‘Twenty five years ago is a long time,’ said McNish. ‘But I still remember him doing those donuts at the end of it. I remember it like it was yesterday.
‘Colin winning the World Championship was a big breakthrough. You know, when you come from a wee country, anyone doing well at any sport generates national coverage — but also national pride.
‘If you are then involved in the sport, then that is magnified, not just because you have a personal relationship.
‘You have an understanding of what it means and an understanding of the effort, energy and everything that went into it.
‘To some extent with Colin, it
was a case of when, more than if. Purely because of how good he was. When you talk about talent, he had it in absolute abundance. It was always in a lot of people’s minds that, if he could put together a clean and tidy season, he was going to be world champion. ‘But you never know these things until it’s done. It’s only when you cross the line with the chequered flag waving that you know you’ve actually achieved it. That’s the first time when you can let off the throttle. ‘That’s why there was a lot of support and sentiment in Scotland at the time. And also why there was so much support across rallying, because he was a colourful character — and somebody who knew how to throw the car around, certainly.
‘In a way, he became more important as a rally driver than as the face of the video game. Because, remember, his game was out around the same time.
‘No question about it, his game was huge. He achieved many firsts. The first Scottish World Rally champion — and the first person to transcend his sport with a video game, certainly in motorsport.
‘There are a lot of drivers who, in a bizarre way, got interested through the game — and went into motorsport because of it.
‘Personally, I started out at the same time as Colin. When I started Formula Ford, he was starting rallying. My father knew his dad, Jimmy, quite well because they actually did motocross when they were younger. I’m not sure how successful they were, mind!
‘So we followed Jimmy’s progress in the British Championship, all the many things he won.
‘Then we followed Colin and his brother Alister as well. In that era, David Coulthard, Dario Franchitti and I were of the same generation as Colin.’
That’s a decent crop of drivers when you consider Franchitti’s three Indy 500 titles and Coulthard’s long F1 career. McRae more than deserves his place among the greats, having demonstrated his ability beyond even the demanding world of rally cars.
‘He did Le Mans in 2004 — and that’s something that gets overlooked,’ said McNish. ‘He rode motorbikes, he drove karts, he went to Larkhall a lot and blasted around there.
‘When he came to Le Mans, he did it seriously. He wasn’t just coming to tick it off a list. He was in a Ferrari and did it seriously.
‘We think of the great Sebastien Loeb going from rallying to Le Mans but Colin did it first. There were a few people tried to cross over — and he was able to do it. He had the adaptability and was able to do it competitively.’
McRae was a self-effacing character more than able to laugh at himself, yet was never anything but deadly serious when competition began.
Often described as a force of nature, he was just 27 when he won the world title, the youngest ever to lift the ultimate prize in rallying. He certainly loved to take bold lines and put the hammer down.
If a corner called for him to be in fifth gear then, no matter how loudly or clearly his co-driver called out the instruction, there was always a chance — not so much 50-50 as 80-20 — that he’d hit the curve in sixth. Then, however improbably, make it work.
Yet when asked to explain what it took to succeed in his profession, the man himself often emphasised the need for much more than just hell-for-leather boldness.
‘It’s quite a delicate job when you’re taking a corner,’ he patiently told one interviewer.
‘If you’re too aggressive, you won’t be as quick. And you are going to break the car.
‘It maybe looks aggressive from the outside. But it’s all very delicate — and very controlled.’
Twenty five years ago, that controlled aggression delivered the ultimate reward.
McRae’s death in a helicopter crash in 2007 robbed us of a true great, a member of the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame and Motosport Hall of Fame.
But the memories aren’t going anywhere. And, thanks to modern technology, many of the highlights are still available for anyone to watch, any time they like.
There are worse ways to spend a few hours, certainly, than revisiting the glory days of a man who would become a legend.