Pace Notes

A fitting tribute

That Colin McRae would have approved of the rally run in his memory, there can be no doubt. Right from the competition on offer last Saturday to the plentiful supply of Stella on the tables at the supper which followed a day's sport in the Perthshire woods.

All those connected with the Colin McRae Forest Stages Rally should take a bow. The efforts which went into getting five world champions to sign up to the event (even though Stig Blomqvist failed to make the starters' list after his co-driver was unable to make the trip) were immense. Having found the drivers, period-ish cars were also unearthed to give the Perth-based rally the genuine feel of a classic days-gone-by event.

Arriving at the end of the second stage, Colin's father Jim McRae could scarcely believe what he'd seen. Nudging his Porsche 911 into neutral on the stop line of the Errochty test, the five-time British champion grinned from ear to ear.

Jim McRae and Andy Richardson, Porsche 911 RS © LAT

"It's 25 years ago and I'm on the Scottish Rally again," he beamed. "I can't remember the last time I saw spectators like that. It's just amazing. That first mile of the stage, they were everywhere - right down both sides of the road."

And the day carried on in that vein. Before the event, the organisers, Coltness Car Club, made no bones about the fact that they were slightly fearful of the step into the unknown they were about to take. Yes, previous incarnations of this rally had attracted more spectators than your run of the mill Scottish Rally Championship round, but this one could have been a real headache.

It's reckoned that 50,000-plus rally fans crowded into the stages surrounding the small Scottish village of Aberfeldy - a field which provided the day's sole service park - and beyond a bit of inevitable stickiness on the A9, the traffic eased its way through the area without anything like the grief which had been talked about by some doom-mongers.

Those 50,000 who made the stages were treated to an exceptional spectacle, which included world champions Ari Vatanen, Bjorn Waldegaard, Hannu Mikkola, and Louise Aitken-Walker taking on the best of British - Jim and Alister McRae, Phil Collins, Russell Brookes, Andrew Cowan, and Kris Meeke - and America's finest from yesterday and today: John Buffum, and Travis Pastrana and Ken Block.

Admittedly - and as you'd expect, in all honesty - the competition wasn't as fierce as it might have been in the late 70s, down the 80s and into the 90s, but it was still a sight to behold. Everybody left Saturday with more memories, but one man left with a better story than most. That man was Calum MacKenzie.

MacKenzie ended the event as joint winner of the unofficial 'old boys' rally. Joint with Alister McRae. McRae's Mk2 Escort had given him a bit of trouble through the morning stages, but by the afternoon the former British champ had it all sorted. And Colin's younger brother was flying. Going into the final Craigvinean test, he was tied with Mackenzie, but Alister blitzed the final test and looked to have won. Such was his speed through the classic stage, he took a full minute out of 1981 world champion Vatanen, ending the test on the bumper of the Vatanen/David Richards Rothmans-decaled Escort.

Just when McRae Jr thought he'd delivered the perfect result on the day, his father Jim turned it - quite literally on its head. McRae Sr lost the 911 on a tighter-than-expected left-hander and toppled over the edge. The beautiful Porsche rolled and rolled. And rolled and rolled. Eventually, McRae - having scaled the kind of hill that would have given Sir Edmund Hillary vertigo - re-appeared at the top of the bank to explain himself.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, spectators had dialled 999 having seen the accident but nothing of driver or co-driver. Two fire engines arrived and barrelled their way into the stage. Even more unfortunately, one of the trucks got stuck and had to be recovered itself.

Calum Mackenzie and Alan Clark, Ford Escort II © LAT

Having run the event perfectly to time, the organisers were forced to cancel the final stage, leaving MacKenzie's Mk2 as the winner, courtesy of the faster time he managed over Alister on the opening test.

In the end, the result mattered not a jot. In many ways, it was great for MacKenzie to be able to walk away and tell his mates about the day he took on the world's best and beat them. But equally, a McRae was as quick as anybody over the four stages which ran - so Colin would have approved.

And then the great debate started. Should this become an annual event or should we count our blessings for being there the day the greats came back? It's a real toughie and I can see both sides of the argument.

In all honesty, a day like Saturday is never going to happen again, so why try and recreate what's only going to be a watered-down version of the real deal? Let's just leave it at that. And remember the day in the same way we remember Colin - with tremendous fondness and massive admiration for what was achieved.