Remembering McRae's magic moment

As a soundtrack, the song at number one when Colin McRae started the 1995 RAC Rally was perfect.

I Believe, by Robson and Jerome.

Not that your average rally fan in the forests was cranking the volume on the track from November 19-22, though. Why would they, when they had an on-song flat-four to tune into?

McRae and co-driver Derek Ringer were very much on song on Britain's round of the World Rally Championship 20 years ago. The pair arrived home from the penultimate round in Spain aggrieved, feeling unclear team orders had gone against them.

A potential 10-point lead in the championship had been sacrificed. McRae and Subaru team-mate Carlos Sainz would start the final round of the championship absolutely level on points. The purity of the fight appealed to McRae.

He fully intended to win the RAC for the second year in succession and he knew only too well what the winner would be taking...

By the time the rally started in Chester, the high drama of the previous round had been forgotten. Sainz's co-driver Luis Moya remembers the moment the hatchet was buried.

"I was in my hotel room," says Moya. "Colin came and knocked on the door. He had some tears and he told me he was sorry for what had happened in Spain. I had tears too and I told to him: 'Colin, I had respect for you before, but now even more respect'.

"When we finished in Spain, Carlos and I, we didn't want to talk to him and Derek, and they didn't want to talk with us - but when we started in England, everything was clear."

What was also clear was this was going to be an RAC Rally like no other. Chester was overrun with rally fans; just getting out of scrutineering at the Northgate Arena took the Scotsmen forever. A nation was starting to believe.

After Sainz's win in Spain, the Subaru drivers headed to Chester level on points © LAT

There was drama from the off as Sainz, leading after the Tatton Park opener, attacked the second-stage watersplash in Chatsworth. His Impreza's radiator was damaged, but, fortunately for the Spaniard, a replacement was waiting at the end of the test and would be fitted on the way to Clumber Park.

Sunday's spectator stages meant little by comparison to the tour of Kielder, Grizedale and Wales that would be the next three days. Tommi Makinen led the event into the woods, with Hamsterley providing a half-light 17-mile loosener for the 36-mile Pundershaw stage that lay in wait further up the road that Monday morning.

The #4 555 roared through the opener, 27 seconds faster than anybody. Queries were made about the time. Couldn't be right, could it?

Yes it could. And yes, it was.

McRae was leading and he was confident. He wasn't pushing his luck, he wasn't taking risks, he was just driving.

Riding his luck or not, he lost the lead at the hands of a particularly punishing Pundershaw. He suffered a puncture and had to stop and change.

Such was the sheer volume of people lining the route, it was no surprise that help was on hand when the pair pulled over mid-way through the stage; a group of fans had lifted the left-rear off the ground almost before the crew were out of the car.

They were on their way. The lead was lost, but the chase was on. Sainz was a minute ahead, but he had his own concerns.

His car was overheating. He feared the head might have been bent following the Chatsworth issue the previous day. The car made it to service in Falstone, where the thermostat was removed and an inspected engine given a clean bill of health.

Apart from running a little cooler on the road section than he might have liked, Sainz had no complaints about the power on offer from the barking boxer ahead of him.

McRae was in his element in building a lead, then reclaiming it © LAT

Subaru's all-action day in Kielder continued when McRae clattered a rock in Kershope. He drove the final 10 miles with the right-front wheel moving further and further back into the arch. He got out of the stage and was still an astonishing two seconds faster than Sainz, despite going off over the flying finish.

But now there was work to do. The tyre had burst under the load, but incredibly the suspension lugs had twisted and not broken.

Twenty minutes and a log to lever the leg back into place were all that was needed to get McRae on the M6 and heading south for service at Penrith. This time he was lucky. Had another stage been planned in Kielder, the McRae challenge would likely have ended there.

Having been 1m14s down after Pundershaw, McRae remained relaxed and predicted he would be back in front 24 hours later, after a day in Wales. Admittedly, he expected more resistance from Sainz on the wider roads that would be running almost entirely in daylight. But he remained a man on a mission.

And the first part of the mission was completed on the Tuesday's second visit to Sweet Lamb-Hafren. Good as his word, McRae had overhauled the two-time world champion and was back to the front.

Sainz looked a broken man when the cars arrived in Chester at the end of the penultimate day. He had, to that point, not put a foot wrong, driven a near-perfect rally. But Colin had found that little bit extra.

Undoubtedly, football match-sized crowds, klaxons and near constant cheering of one name were helping.

Massive crowds followed McRae throughout the rally © LAT

But, actually, what we were seeing was a man doing what he'd been born to do. He was taking a rally car to the edge of adhesion in some horribly wet and miserable late autumn conditions and keeping it there. McRae found a little more width on the knife-edge that week in November. And he did so despite a lingering problem with the car's hydraulics.

Sainz's final hope lay with the then 27-year-old clamming up as he closed on the finish. Some hope. If anything, he went quicker.

And, at the end of Clocaenog East on Wednesday, November 22, history was made. The Scotsmen had done it. Britain had its first ever World Rally champions.

A couple of hours later - the time caught in the pictures was 1507hrs - McRae was joined on the finish ramp by a jubilant team. Subaru had won its first title; Prodrive ruled the world.

And so, to the nightclub. But not before L555 BAT had been given the once over at post-event scrutineering, a source of much frustration for the mechanics charged with watching a painful process eating into beer time.

What was better for family McRae was Alister's result: on top of winning that year's British Rally Championship, AMac scored a career-best fourth on the RAC in a Ford Escort Cosworth partly paid for by Colin's burgeoning clothing business. Happy days.

And a happy night, although Margaret McRae does have a lingering memory of her world champion son's choice of footwear for the party.

"He was wearing his kilt, which was nice," she says, "but he had these 'bovver' boots on his feet. I was mortified!"

And the celebrating didn't stop there. A week or so later, everybody was down to Banbury for a seasonal sing-song with Noel Edmunds.

"It was a fantastic evening with lots of silly games," smiles David Richards, team principal at the time.

"And at the end of the evening, we presented Colin with his title-winning car. What an extraordinary time."

Ringer's about right when he adds: "At the time, I don't think Colin or I quite understood what it meant to reach that level and how, for Colin in particular, his whole life was about to change."

Twenty years ago this month, the lives of all British rally fans changed for good. Now, we all believed.

It is 20 years since Colin McRae won the World Rally Championship and this week's Motorsport News looks back that epic showdown on Rally GB that handed the Lanarkshire driver his only world crown.

There is also a 14-page preview ahead of Britain's flagship event, including a look at the main runners and riders, an interview with Elfyn Evans and a reflection on Petter Solberg's love affair with the Welsh stages.