Colin McRae

**Colin Steele McRae** (5 August 1968 - 15 September 2007) was a Scottish rally driver and winner of the 1995 World Rally Championship. He was a much loved hero as the first British World Rally Champion. He was so famous that the Colin McRae Forest Stages is so called because of his expertise.

## Career

Young Lanarkshire teenager, and budding future star, Colin McRae was motivated to race by his father who was a five-time British Rally Champion. Colin began his rally career at the age of 17 in 1985, he drove a Talbot Sunbeam with his first co-driver being Nicky Jack of Aberdeenshire.

In 1988 he performed a giant-killing act when he took the Scottish Rally Championship series crown in a humble Vauxhall Nova. Craving more power, his next car was a Ford Sierra XR 4x4. Then in 1991 and 1992 he took the British Rally Championship, and became their lead works driver for the 1994 season in the Impreza after its debut in 1993.

In 1995, he secured WRC title victory, becoming the United Kingdom's first ever World Rally Champion and also became the youngest champion, a record he retains today.

In 1997, he and Derek Ringer separated, and Nicky Grist took over.

In 1999, Colin McRae left Subaru for the M-Sport Ford works team in their new Focus RS WRC. The deal saw McRae earning six million pounds over two years, which at the time made him the highest earning rally driver in history. This move was immediately rewarded with two consecutive wins at the Safari Rally and Rally Portugal. A number of shunts and reliability issues for the new car for much of the rest of that season, however, resulted in only sixth place in the championship standings overall. The 1999 season should have brought new hopes for the Scotsman but instead brought him a woeful season, only finishing three out of the 14 rallies in 1999. This began when McRae was excluded in his first event at his new team. Monte Carlo saw both Focuses disqualified for an irregular water pump.

In 2000, his season was blighted by several retirements once again thanks to the the unreliable Focus that year. But he did win in Spain and Greece to allow him to finish fourth overall, despite his title hopes having ended long before then.

In 2001, McRae scored three wins during the year to Richard Burns' one in New Zealand. However another accident on stage 4 of the Rally GB cost the Scot the 2001 title and it went to Burns of Subaru.

In 2002, Colin McRae won consecutively in the Acropolis and Safari rallies. The Safari Rally was his last World Rally Championship win and the last for a Briton for 13 years until the Ulsterman Kris Meeke won the Rally Argentina in 2015. The Scotsman was fourth overall with only four non-finishes that year, a stark contrast to his early years with Ford.

For 2003, McRae signed for Citroën, a team of winning pedigree due to its successes of the previous year with young Frenchman Sébastien Loeb but otherwise undertaking its first complete campaign at World Rally Championship level. Ringer came back when several disagreements between Grist and McRae led to their split after the Rally New Zealand conflict, and Derek Ringer took over and finished the championship with him.

After failing to find a seat for the 2004 season, he left the WRC, missing the 2004 season. He returned for three more events, his final appearance being as a temporary replacement for the injured Sebastien Loeb in the 2006 Rally Turkey.

McRae's last rally, the 2006 Rally Turkey was a one-off appearance, replacing the injured Sebastien Loeb in the Citroen Xsara WRC. The twice world champion, who had suffered a motorbike accident and injured his shoulder, still managed to win the title with Marcus Gronholm unable to benefit from the Frenchman's absence. He took over the car that Xavier Pons had previously deputised in. That rally was ended on stage 19 with mechanical gremlins.

Then in 2007, he and his son Johnny and two family friends died in a tragic helicoper accident.