The magic men: Memories of two legends

Derek Ringer's good memories of McRae

Trossachs Rally, 1988

This was the event where we were fighting for the Scottish Championship. This was the last round. We were in a two-wheel-drive Sierra Cosworth and David Gillanders was in a Metro 6R4. We didn't really stand a chance; it was a real four-wheel-drive rally, really frosty and shitty weather.

The wind-ups were going before the start. We had (fellow competitor) Murray (Grierson) carry our spare wheel in the back of his car and Murray was ready to stop at any stage to help us. We made sure David knew about this. Murray was running third on the road, David was second and we were first. Being first on the road wasn't best in the conditions, so we went and hid before the start. In those days, there was penalty-free lateness, so Colin and I didn't turn up at our allocated time. David could have waited for us and eventually forced us to go ahead of him. He didn't - he went into the stage, pissed off. He took a tree stump out after about three miles or something like that. He was out. We drove past and that was that - we were champions and we didn't even need the help of our flying service car behind us!

Winning the Scottish Championship was great for Colin, given that he was young and using six or seven different cars in all of the various championships we were doing.

RAC Rally, 1990

This was Colin's first time driving a four-wheel-drive car at the highest level. The preparation firm RED had developed their own differential and done a huge amount of work. The rally went for five days and started with the Sunday spectator stages. That was where our dramas started - we took the rear corner out against a gate post in Chatsworth. The boys were waiting at the end of the stage to bolt a new corner on.

The next day, we took the other side out of the car in the dark in Cropton. I was calling our coordinator John Millington while we were in the middle of the stage to explain what had happen. John was straight away moving the chase cars around to make sure they were waiting at the end of the stage. They were and they fixed that problem.

Then we had an overnight in York. The first stage the next morning was Hamsterley. We came out of there and the engine was really sick. Basically, we had to change a cylinder head. RED had a spare engine in one of the vans. The van was waiting for us before going into Kielder. We arrived with water pouring out of the exhaust and the boys got onto the car and bolted it all back on, all behind this little pub at the side of the road. And, of course, there were frantic phone calls to check what was going on - but this was before mobile phones, so we were using the phone in the pub! Once the boys had fitted the new cylinder head, complete with some racing cams, we were off up the road. We arrived late in Kielder, but, somehow, we got in there on time...

Once into Kielder, Colin loved the car. It was much crisper at the top end. We then had a broken alternator going into the dark in Kielder, so the boys sorted that out before the stage. We set off up the road for the stage and a driveshaft broke. Back on the radio, the boys said they could sort it, so we went back down the road and put a new shaft in it. We then raced into the stage and got on with it.

We then set a couple of fastest times in Castle O'er and Twiglees in the south of Scotland - Colin's first in the WRC. It was an incredible event. We never stopped. There was so much organising going on during the event - it was a major logistical feat. RED and John Millington did a fantastic job.

The car was known as 'the shed' in the end, partly because there wasn't a straight panel on it - and a bolt from a shed holding my door shut. We finished sixth, which wasn't a bad result, but it was the nature of the result which brought us to everybody's attention - the way Colin came through a rally where everything was being thrown at him. For me, that was the rally which didn't quite make or break Colin's career. But not far off.

Rally New Zealand, 1993

We needed a result. The whole Subaru team needed a result from this event. But nobody really expected us to win the rally. We went into the famous Motu Road stage in fourth position. We'd talked about this stage and Colin was taking a softer tyre than other people, so he needed to conserve the tyre. We came out of there fastest, really neat and tidy, and leading the rally.

After that the pressure was incredible. We went a day or a day and a half before we'd even stretched our lead to 10 seconds. It was that close. We came out of one stage and the oil pressure collapsed on the stop line. We rolled down the hill to emergency service. A bolt had come out of the back of the cam cover or something like that. They couldn't get in to fix it - it was impossible to reach. But they did something in 20 minutes. Then we had to go like a bat out of hell to the next stage. The rally went on for another couple of days and the last morning was really nerve-wracking for the whole team. Except Colin and I. It was almost an anti-climax when we got to the finish. Colin and I were just thinking: "Okay, we've done it." I don't think we fully understood the enormity of what we'd done. I think people like Carlos were more upbeat about Colin winning his first rally than Colin was!

That one stage, Motu in 1993, was the most crucial stage Colin ever drove in the world championship. It didn't just set up that first win, but it set up the NZ win in 1994 and then became the turning point in our championship challenge in 1995. It was a really difficult stage, 50km long and so twisty and nadgery. He was exceptional in there. Drivers would come up to us and say they knew they were going to lose 30 seconds or a minute to Colin. From in and out of the car it would look like an unremarkable drive. All the flamboyance was put to one side and the car was made to work. Put it this way, I was always happy to be looking out of the front window to see where we were going!

RAC Rally, 1995

We went to the rally in a difficult position after all of the politics of Catalunya (where McRae had been told to take second place behind teammate Carlos Sainz, meaning the two went to the last round - the RAC - on equal points). I thought it was a measure of Colin that he just got on with it. We didn't sit down and go through it all. We both knew what had to be done and we just got on with it.

The first proper forest stage was Hamsterley and we were so much faster than Carlos through there, I said to the team that I wanted to keep hold of the in-car footage in case there was any quarrel over the time. The time was that good.

We had two or three things which happened on that rally, but we never felt we were going to lose it. We changed a puncture in the middle of Kielder. It was the longest stage and the team was trying to make sense of the mid-stage times. We were up on Carlos, then we lost a lot of time, then made some back. The times didn't make sense.

Then we bent something on the front suspension. Again we got out of the stage. This time we were at the side of the road fixing the problem. Whenever this kind of thing seemed to happen, BBC TV's Tony Mason would appear out of the undergrowth and interview you. We told him: "No problem, Tony." And it wasn't - we just got on with it.

Nothing was going to stop us. In a straight fight, we didn't beat Carlos, we slaughtered him. You can't put into words what winning the championship means, so few people ever do it.

Monte Carlo, 2003

This was a bit of a bitter-sweet moment. Colin and I were back together. I'd only done the Monte a couple of times. And this was a difficult one, with a lot of patchy ice. It went well, though. We were leading for a while and we were never far away from the lead. We finished second to Sebastien (Loeb) and it was a good second. A great drive from Colin. For me one of his best.

We had a few hiccups along the way, but it was a great result for your first time with a new team. We felt really upbeat about everything after that. And then it was the only time we stood on the podium all year. We just kept missing out on the results we felt we deserved.

But that year's Monte was a special one. Even though I hate the rally, it was special. We thought we were on the way and it just didn't work. It was 95 per cent there, but that's just not good enough at that level.

Derek Ringer's bad moment with McRae

Indonesia Rally, 1996

We were leading by three minutes. We had intercom failure. We tried using hand signals to make up for the fact that Colin couldn't hear me, but it didn't work and we destroyed the car. You think back about things like that - if that had gone a different way, everything could have been different. There were a couple more like that, when results were thrown away. With the benefit of hindsight, things didn't need to happen that way - and they put paid to the 1996 championship.

Robert Reid's good memories of Burns

Rally of Wales, 1993

This was our first British Rally Championship event as part of a works team. We were in the Elonex Subaru team with Alister McRae as teammate. Prior to the event, Alister and Richard had shared Markku Alen's Rally Portugal car for a day's testing in Wales, which was enormous fever in itself!

There had been loads of chat about Alister and Richard being in the same team, and then there was Malcolm Wilson in a factory Ford. Who was going to be quickest? There was stacks of anticipation.

Bang, first stage, RB was on it and fastest. And then we won the rally. And then we won the championship. That Rally of Wales was a great event for the confidence, particularly given that the weather was awful - it was pouring with rain. That rally was the one which started to silence a few of Richard's critics. Having Malcolm there was great as well - without him I think we could have deluded ourselves about our pace, but beating MW meant a great deal.

Rally New Zealand, 1996

This was a round of the Asia-Pacific Championship, which was the programme Richard and I had with Mitsubishi that year. This was our first win - an event people remember as not being a full round of the WRC (it was APC and Formula 2 WRC that season), but they don't remember the names who were there and contesting APC that season. We beat both factory Subaru Imprezas of Kenneth Eriksson and Piero Liatti and our teammate Tommi Makinen.

Before we went out to the event, Richard and I had decided to go on holiday with our mates Si Davison and Beef (Michael Park) to Hawaii. When we won, the four of us went out and had a massive celebration in Auckland, then got on the flight to Hawaii on Monday morning. To our amazement, and delight, we arrived in Hawaii and it was Sunday night again - so we got to celebrate the Sunday night of our first big win twice! My lasting memory of the celebrations is Si forcing beer down Richard's throat shouting: "Richard, nobody likes the taste of beer. You've just got to persevere and put up with it."

Safari Rally, 1998

Good moments don't come much sweeter than the first WRC win. Ours came in Kenya, 1998. We'd gone really well all the way through the event. But then on the last stage - a re-run section - the sump smashed into the ruts and launched the car over the road. Richard and I spent the next 30 miles just waiting for some sort of warning light to come on. We were convinced we'd damaged the car and we weren't going to finish. We did, though.

That event suited Richard's methodical approach to the sport - he built his speed and we won. Having said that, that's not to take away any of his pace. That RB was quick in a car was proved by the fact that we set the most number of fastest times across the stretch of the season in 1999 and 2000.

As you would expect, there was a fairly major party after that win. Everybody got thrown into the pool and Richard shaved (team manager) Phil Short's moustache off. Phil wasn't too chuffed about this, but he didn't have much choice! In fact, I think (team principal) Andrew Cowan was helping hold Phil down.

Rally of Portugal, 2000

This was the launch of the new Subaru Impreza. At the test before Portugal, we used the 1999 car to give us a base time. The test road was four kilometres long. We set off in the new car and, as he always did, when we crossed the finish line Richard said: "What was the time?" I told him. He replied: "You don't often get it wrong, but I think you have this time." He couldn't see how it was so quick.

We then went back down the road and simultaneously as I hit the 'top'button on the watch, he said: "What was the time?" It corresponded. The car was that quick. We were supposed to go back to service where the team was anxiously waiting. We didn't. We went back up the road and did another time. Then we sat at the end of the road talking about how this thing was so quick. The team were on the radio, worried there was a problem. We told them not to worry, then blasted back down the road with the good news.

The event itself wasn't that straightforward. We were leading when we had power-steering trouble. The boys changed the pump, but when we were reversing out of service that pump failed as well. We had to do four more stages with no power steering. It was amazing that we stayed in the hunt, but coming into the final stage we were six seconds behind Marcus (Gronholm). That was a lot to ask when we'd only got seven kilometres of stage left. But we went for it. I remember seeing DR (David Richards) standing on the back of an old van holding up the mid-stage split times. We'd taken the six seconds we needed by halfway through the stage.

In every driver's career, there's one car which is special to them. For Richard, it was the 2000 Impreza.

Rally GB, 2001

In some ways, this event was the biggest moment. But it wasn't one moment. The road to this moment started on the other side of the world, in Maramarua forest, New Zealand. The final day of Rally NZ that year, we were head-to-head with Colin (McRae) and we beat him. That was where our challenge for the championship went up another gear.

When we got to Britain, there were four of us in with a shot at the title: us, Colin, Tommi (Makinen) and Carlos (Sainz). Colin and Tommi went out early and we were left to get through. This wasn't one of our best events. This time, though, we just needed to get to the end.

Coming down the hill into Margam Park was incredible. I just kept on pinching myself, telling myself to focus, focus, focus. And then we crossed the line and Richard shouted to me: "You're the best in the world!" I'll never forget that.

He got out the car and stood on the bonnet. I stayed in the car and kept my teary-eyed moment to myself.

After that, there was still work to be done. We still had to get back to Swansea for service and then on to Cardiff for the finish. They were the most stressful road sections ever, making sure all of the timing was right and making sure we didn't make any mistakes. At the same time, that journey down the M4 was probably the best moment for Burnsie and I. We were together. Nobody understood what we'd been through to get to that moment, so for the two of us to share it - just for a while - was fantastic.

The moment was interrupted by Dario arriving alongside us, blowing the horn and hanging out of the window of Richard's road car. It wasn't long after that the party started...

Robert Reid's bad moment with Burns

Rally New Zealand, 2002

Richard and I had been struggling with the setup of the Peugeot 206 WRC through the early part of the year. We'd led in Finland before retiring with a crushed intercooler pipe after going flat-out over the big jump near the house in Ouninpohja - a jump where we'd never had trouble before.

The next gravel event after that was New Zealand, and we both thought we could have a go there as well. We did. We took 45 seconds out of Marcus (Gronholm) through day one. Marcus is such a tough competitor, though, you can't afford to back off. He'd taken some time back off us through the stage before Paproa Station, so we were on it through there. Richard ran wide in a right-hander over a bridge and missed the apex. We then arrived at the apex of the next left-hander still pointing in the wrong direction.

He gave it a chuck anyway, but it wasn't going to work. We clipped the bank on the inside and started to roll. There were a couple of bangs and then complete silence. Complete silence is really bad in the middle of an accident because you just know the next bang is going to be a big one. I wasn't wrong. It was a really big one.

When the accident stopped, Richard said: "Are you okay?" I replied: "Just. Are you okay?" He replied: "Just."

Then we heard loads of children screaming outside and we immediately thought we might have hit one of them. We hadn't, but we had rolled clean over a fence - and standing on the fence had been a child. Luckily, we'd been going so quick we cleared the child on the fence, mid-accident.

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