Colin McRae

At 39 years old, Colin McRae has this physical status:

Colin Steele McRae, (5 August 1968 – September 15, 2007), was a Scottish rally driver from Lanark, Scotland.

Colin McRae's uncle, a five-time British Rally Champion, was the first Scottish man and the youngest to win the World Rally Championship Drivers' title, a record he holds. McRae's outstanding work with the Subaru World Rally Team helped the team win the World Rally Championship Constructors' championship three times in succession in 1995, 1996, and 1997.

After a four-year association with Ford Motor Co., I was astonish.

McRae's team, which had won nine events, then moved to Citron World Rally Team in 2003, where despite not winning an event, the team went on to win their first three consecutive manufacturers' titles.

In 1996, McRae was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to motorsport.

His son and two family friends were also killed in the accident.

In November 2008, he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame for the second time.

Personal life

McRae was born in Lanark, Scotland, to Jimmy and Margaret McRae. Jimmy McRae was the five-time champion of the British Rally Championship. McRae was the eldest of three brothers; Alister McRae, his middle brother, is also a rally car driver. Hugh "Shug" Steele, McRae's maternal uncle, was also a rally runner. He attended Robert Owen Primary School and Lanark Grammar School, as well as spending a year at Coatbridge College. He started his apprenticeship at Archie's Autos and then worked as a technician for his dad's plumbing and heating company.

McRae was married to Alison (née Hamilton), who was 19 years old when she served as his co-driver and had two children, Hollie and Johnny. McRae went to Monaco in 1995, partly due to his friendship with David Coulthard. However, when his young family grew up, he spent more time at his Lanarkshire home. The couple purchased the Jerviswood House in the 17th century. Max McRae, McRae's nephew, is also a motorsport racer.

In 1996, McRae was elected a Member of the British Empire for services to motorsports on the Birthday Honours List.

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Career

McRae started riding trial bikes at an early age, but despite being more interested in four-wheeled vehicles than two-wheeled bikes, he began his competitive career in motorsport riding trial bikes. At the age of thirteen, he became Scotland's schoolboy motocross champion. McRae found autotesting, bought a Mini Cooper, and began competing at the age of sixteen through the Coltness Car Club. He began to discuss with another club member a loaned Hillman Avenger GT for the Kames Stages, a single-venue stage rally not far from McRae's house. McRae placed 13th in his class, placing him first in his class, despite the fact that he had attended the majority of the tournament in a higher class.

McRae, a father of Ian Grindrod, became his co-driver, in 1986 and established a name for himself with his speed and exciting style of driving. His driving style attracted many comparisons to Finnish ex-World Rally Champion Ari Vatanen, whom McRae had always adored.

His first WRC event was a 1987 Swedish Rally in a Vauxhall Nova, where he finished 36th overall and then returned to the Sierra and finishing 15th overall. In 1988, he captured the Scottish Rally Championship series in his Vauxhall Nova. His next vehicle was a Ford Sierra XR 4x4. In 1989, he came 5th overall at Rally New Zealand in a rear-wheel driven Sierra Cosworth. Despite numerous accidents, McRae took sixth place in 1990 in that year's RAC Rally. McRae went professional in 1991 after being hired by Prodrive boss David Richards to his Subaru team in the British Rally Championship for a permutation of about £10,000. McRae was the British Rally Champion in 1991 and 1992, before graduating to the Subaru factory team for the World Rally Championships. McRae made his debut in the British Touring Car Championship in 1992, with a one-off appearance for the Prodrive-run BMW factory team in the Knockhill round, where he collided with Matt Neal. McRae was found to have caused an avoidable accident and was eventually disqualified, according to race officials.

McRae began driving the Prodrive-built Group A Subaru Legacy with Finns Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikkola, and Markku Alén, who was a student at the University of Helsinki. At Rally New Zealand that year, McRae won his first WRC rally in the car. It was also the first rally victory for the newly formed Subaru World Rally Team shortly before the Legacy was to be retired in favour of the new Subaru Impreza 555. Such were the growing success of his young Subaru factory team as they competed against TTE, a front-running Toyota company who were barred from the championship after the 1995 Rally Catalunya due to the use of an unlawful air restrictor. McRae won the driver's title in 1995, which he won with a victory over his double champion teammate Carlos Sainz in a straight competition on the season-ending Rally of Great Britain. Though a champion with the outfit in subsequent years, with, increasingly, more specialized activities such as the Acropolis Rally, Safari Rally, and the Tour de Corse, McRae could not do better second place in the standings in either 1996 or 1997, after Finland and Mitsubishi Ralliart's Tommi Mäkinen. During this period, he helped Subaru win three consecutive manufacturers' titles. In 1998, he won three more rallies and finished third in the standings, as well as winning the Race of Champions in Gran Canaria, the Canary Islands, in what would be his last season with the team.

McRae's M-Sport-run Ford factory team took over for 1999, driving the new Ford Focus rally vehicle after many years of varying success. McRae's earnings per year increased by six million pounds over two years, making him the highest-earning rally driver in history at the time. At the Safari Rally and Rally Portugal, he won for the second time in a row. For the majority of the year, the new car had several shunts and reliability issues, resulting in only sixth place in the championship standings overall. In addition, a rare personal pointless run for McRae started the year, but it came with a podium only on the following February's Swedish Rally. McRae continued to be victorious on the asphalt of Catalunya and Greece's sand gravel, ranking in the 2000 overall standings at number four. McRae threatened to leave the team if the issues persists midway through the 2000 season. Due to the season's upturn, he's decided to extend his deal with Ford for another two years.

McRae's intermittent success with Ford continued into 2001, with the latter losing to score in any of the first four rounds, including momentarily leading defending champion Tommi Mäkinen on the stage of the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally before being forced to withdraw, leading to three consecutive victories in Argentina, Cyprus, and Greece, tying for third position. However, McRae was once more denied a potential second title and finishing second in the driver's championship, two points behind Subaru's Richard Burns, who led the championship outright into the final round in the United Kingdom.

McRae won the Safari Rally in 2002 and was the driver with the most event victories in the World Rally Championships. Carlos Sainz had his record smashed. Following the 2002 season, McRae's Ford came to an end, and Ford decided against renewing the deal after being shown that they were unable to commit a significant amount of their budget to a driver's wage. The two groups have deteriorated into amicable terms, with Ford's European director of motorsport Martin Whitaker saying, "I want to publicly thank Colin and Nicky for their contributions during the Ford Motor Company's four years together." Both of them would do well in the future, so I wish them all the best." "It's been a very fruitful four years, we've achieved a lot of very positive results, and I'm very happy that myself and Ford have had a fruitful relationship," McRae said.

McRae signed with Citron, a company with winning pedigree following its success with young Frenchman Sébastien Loeb, but the company is not competing at World Rally Championship level. McRae's second-place finish on his debut in Monte Carlo, along with Loeb and Carlos Sainz, the team's first-place finish, as he ended the season in seventh place in the drivers' championship, with no victories. For the 2004 season, rule changes were introduced, shifting the previous tradition of having three nominated points-scoring players within a team to two. With Loeb's tenure as part of a multi-year contract, the Citron factory team, under Guy Fréquelin's leadership, was forced to choose either dropping McRae or Sainz. McRae had to look elsewhere for 2004 after Sainz was the more profitable of the two seasons during the 2003 season. David Richards, McRae's former boss, who had to hand over WRC's commercial rights holders ISC and worried that the absence of a character like McRae would hurt the sport's ability to market the sport, went about helping McRae find a drive for 2004. McRae was unable to locate a team, and for the first time in over ten years, he will not be competing in the World Rally Championship.

McRae has also competed in a different sport than the World Rally Championship. He competed in an ASCAR Racing Series event in Northamptonshire in September 2002, finishing in sixth position.

McRae returned to Prodrive for the 2004 24 Hours of Le Mans, where he finished third in the GTS class and ninth overall in a Ferrari 550-GTS Maranello teaming Darren Turner and Rickard Rydell. "Colin has adapted much better than people hoped" to endurance sportscar racing, according to Le Mans winner Allan McNish.

McRae made his Dakar Rally with Nissan in January 2004, winning two stage titles in a row. He returned to the Dakar in 2005 and was the fastest on two of the first three stages in Morocco before crashing out of the climb towards the end of stage six.

McRae raced for Great Britain in 2004 and 2005, alongside Formula One driver and fellow Scot David Coulthard. With McRae and Coulthard reuniting to represent Scotland, England and Scotland formed separate squads for the 2006 case.

McRae, 2005, became the first female champion of the Baja 500 Portalegre competition.

McRae recovered from a series of one-off drives for koda on the 2005 Rally GB and Rally Australia, with both finishing seventh and retiring due to a clutch problem on the final leg of the rally, with the former ending the hopes of a good finish.

McRae competed for Subaru in the first live televised American rally in Los Angeles as part of the X-Games on August 5, 2006. After landing awkwardly from a jump, McRae rolled the car onto the penultimate corner, which damaged the front bumper and left the front tyre. Despite this, McRae kept the car running and finished the run, taking his time only 0.13 seconds slower than eventual winner Travis Pastrana. He was scheduled to return from a cycling injury shortly before the event, when semi-works Kronos Citron replaced Sébastien Loeb. He resigned from seventh place after suffering a final-stage alternator failure. He was later dropped by Citron for the forthcoming Rally Australia and was replaced by Xavier Pons.

McRae said in August that he was still hoping to find a seat for the 2008 WRC season, but that "if it doesn't happen next year, I won't come back" because you can only be out of something at this level for so long." David Richards revealed on the Autosport podcast that he and McRae had discussed McRae's return to Subaru in 2007. Robert Reid was sent by McRae to be his co-driver, and the pair were supposed to perform together, but McRae was killed before the experiment could take place.

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