David Emery OnlineColin
18 September 2007
You have almost certainly heard about the tragic death of Colin McRae in a helicopter crash this weekend. That itself would be bad enough but the news that his 5 year old son, along with another boy and a family friend, were in the crash as well makes it even worse.
It is a huge loss of motorsport – Colin McRae was quite probably one of the most gifted drivers, no matter what the car; Formula 1, Touring Cars, Motorbikes all – in my opinion – pale in comparison with the skills needed in rallying, and in rallying he was undoubtedly the best. The ability to thread a car down a road you’ve never driven down before – relying solely on your pace drivers shouted directions – at immensely high speed (not that much slower then an F1 car) and across all sorts of varying terrain, including ice, mud and sand, is surely a much greater challenge then any other motorsport can provide.
He was the first British driver to win the World Rally Championship back in 1995, and not only that but he clinched it at the final rally which was held in the UK. Now, I’ll be honest my memory is fairly rubbish – I either went to this rally or the one the year before – but the experience was probably the same. In some slightly sadist act the British leg of the WRC calendar is always held in mid to late November, so rallying to me means extended periods of standing in a forest – probably in Wales – being freezing cold.
The cold is worth it, though. After what seems like an age (or at least an age to a 13 year old) the first car will rocket past, kicking up dirt and full of fury, and all notions of getting slight bored get banished instantly. The only way to appreciate Colin’s superiority over the other drivers is to have seen him in this context; he was always more aggressive, more exiting and pushing harder – right on the ragged edge, but never going beyond that. You could tell it was Colin in a car even if they all looked the same, something which could never be said about drivers in F1, for example.
The real eye opener was to come, though, as in rallying they run quickest driver to slowest, each going past with about a minute between them. After the top drivers go though you start to get the rest of the pack, and they seem so slow. So slow, in fact, that you almost think that you could do better in a normal car. Which is of course utter rubbish – they’re all going incredibly quickly – it’s just that the top runners are on such a higher plane that everything else seems utterly pedestrian in comparison.
I don’t think we’ll ever see another driver quite like Colin.