I’ll never forget the first time I saw Colin McRae in action. It’s engraved in my memory like few other rallying moments.
As the rallying world celebrates 25 years since the Scotsman won his only World Rally Championship crown at Rally GB in 1995, it seems the perfect time to reminisce.
It was on the first stage of Rally New Zealand in 1992, on the Totora Park stage in suburban Auckland.
McRae was the British Champion and was already being lauded as a future world champion, and he was at the wheel of a works Subaru Legacy.
He came into sight as the fourth car on the road. The road went right over a blind crest, and young Colin was fully sideways, and way more committed than any other driver.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen, and perhaps would ever see again.
A few stages later it was all over when his Subaru’s engine died, but I’d become a McRae fan in that one, split second moment.
Twelve months later, I was there again when McRae took his, and Subaru’s, first victory in the World Rally Championship when he mastered the Motu to lead home a star studded field at Rally New Zealand.
His winning donuts in the Travelodge car park in Auckland are another of my ‘marvellous McRae memories’.
I also saw him many times at Rally Australia, in the good times and the bad. He won, he crashed, he missed the pre-event lottery for starting positions, and he thrilled the fans over the event’s many big jumps.
Colin McRae was an elusive, difficult guy to approach though.
His demeanour was often prickly and he could appear arrogant and stuck up, but in reality it was probably more his natural shyness, and his want to just be himself, and not the focus of everyone’s attention.
The problem was, when you’re that good, people want a piece of you.
Some years later I would interview his father, Jimmy, and couldn’t have met a more friendly, welcoming man. In a relaxed hotel room, Jimmy was just a rally driver, a father and a good guy.
It crossed my mind at the time that Colin would have been exactly the same, in the right setting.
In September 2007, when news came through that Colin McRae had died in a helicopter crash in Scotland, it was a real “Princess Diana” moment.
Like Possum Bourne’s death, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, and I’m sure every rally fan reading this would be the same.
The “Flying Scotsman” was taken way too soon, and will forever be remembered as one of rallying’s greatest drivers.
I’m just glad I got to witness his brilliance ‘live’.
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