Driver Focus - Colin McRae

Rallying is in the McRae blood, Colin’s father Jimmy was a five-time British Rally Champion. His brother Alister has also graced the World Rally Championship. Those who watched rallying in the nineties will know the impact the McRae name had on the sport still reverberates today.

Colin began his career riding trial bikes at an early age but always retained a passion for machines with four wheels rather than two. At sixteen he traded his bike in for a Mini Cooper and began competing in autotests. In 1986 he entered the Scottish Rally Championship and by 1988 he was champion. He flirted with WRC drives between 1987 and 1991 before turning professional to join David Richards' Subaru team for the British Rally Championship. He won two consecutive titles and was rewarded by graduating to compete in the WRC full time.

For his first year competing, McRae was driving a Prodrive-built Subaru Legacy alongside his idol, ex-champion Ari Vatanen. He took his first WRC win in New Zealand, which was even more momentous as it was the first win for the Subaru World Rally Team. By 1995, he was champion. Britain had never had a WRC champion before and taking the championship at the season-ending RallyGB made him a hero for British motorsport. Not only was he the first Briton, but he was also the youngest - a record he still holds.

This was his first and last championship as a driver, but led Subaru to three consecutive manufacturer’s titles in the years to follow.

In 1999 he made the switch to the Ford factory team in a deal that saw him earning £6 million over a two year contract, making him the highest earning driver in history. He struggled at Ford, the car was unreliable and he threatened to leave the team on more than one occasion. He took fourth in the 2000 championship but that was never going to be high enough in the rankings to satisfy a driver of his talent. In 2001, the mixed fortunes continued – he had a terrible start to the season but battled on to take the lead in the latter stages of the year. He was all set to take his second championship, again in Great Britain, but crashed out and had to settle with second.

Fans of Colin loved him, not because he won races, but because of how he won them. The record books would suggest that Sébastien Loeb is the greatest driver to grace the sport but none could match McRae for excitement. There is a reason that his video games out-sold the official WRC games – he would drive the car beyond its limits and the fans loved him for it.

By 2002 the McRae name had cemented itself into the record book when Colin claimed the record of most event wins in the WRC. He parted ways with Ford after they were unable to meet his salary demands and signed for Citroën.

He was forced out in 2004 after rule changes meant that a team could only enter two drivers and Carlos Sainz had had a stronger finish in the year’s standings. His former boss at Subuaru, David Richards, was now the commercial rights holder of WRC and was worried that losing such a big name would damage the series’ marketability.

In his later career McRae set out to try his hand at some of motorsport’s greatest races including the Dakar Rally and 24 Heures du Mans. He made a return to the WRC for a series of one-off races for Škoda and competed in the first live televised American rally in Los Angeles as part of X-Games. His final rally came at 2006 Rally Turkey where he was brought in to replace the injured Sébastien Loeb.

A year later, on 15 September 2007, McRae crashed his helicopter just a mile from his family home in Lanark, Scotland. The world of rallying lost a legend and the five year old son who was set to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps.

Over 15,000 fans made their way to Lanark to pay their respects with a lone bagpiper playing ‘Flower of Scotland’. At the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, his good friend David Coulthard changed his iconic helmet design to one similar to McRae’s as a tribute.

In 2008, 1300 Subarus joined a 300 mile convoy from Lanark to Banbury in tribute to the late star. The McRae family had set up a charitable foundation to raise funds for up and coming drivers – after the first day of the convoy it had already raised over £25,000.

As the world moves on and new champions are crowned, fans of racing and rallying will always remember Colin McRae’s name and his legacy is plain to see.