The lesson Meeke needed to learn from McRae

Kris Meeke's departure from the World Rally Championship was long overdue. He'd crashed, crashed and crashed again. In between times, he'd won some rallies from a favourable place on the road, set some times and said some stuff. But ultimately, when push came to shove, he came up short.

Looking back through Meeke's stats, it wouldn't be hard to make the argument in that first sentence stick. The numbers don't lie; the statistics are black and white. But what about the shades of grey?

Meeke spent much of his time in shades of grey. Lots of people loved his speed, but couldn't trust his consistency. Would and could he be champion? They just didn't know; nobody knew.

In terms of colour, few drivers added (being positive, let's make that add) more than he did (does) to the championship. Beyond his spectacular driving style, his voice and opinion were worthy and insightful in a series increasingly lacking in charisma.

Remember when Sebastien Ogier was going bananas about running first on the road a few years ago? Meeke was one of the very few drivers who went on the record to tell the champion he was talking nonsense.

Decisive, forthright and resolute out of the car, Meeke has become something of an enigma when he tightens the belts.

'Meeke starts the season looking to demonstrate that he can blend his massive speed with consistency and rally wins. If he achieves that, the championship can be his.'

But when was that written? Was that ahead of Meeke's first full year in what was a corker of a rally car, the DS 3 WRC, in 2014? No. Maybe it was the start of the new generation in 2017? Again, no.

You need to rewind quite a few more seasons, as those words formed part of a preview to the 2006 Junior World Rally Championship, when Meeke was driving for Citroen's Junior team. That year that title should have been his.

In the six rallies the Juniors started, nobody set more fastest times and nobody led for longer than Meeke's factory C2 S1600. But he didn't win - he was two points behind Slovakian star Jozef Beres in seventh place.

When Meeke was dropped by Citroen in 2006 the wilderness beckoned

When leading by half a minute after the opening day in Spain that year, Meeke found Jari-Matti Latvala's Ford Focus "in the middle of the road". He hit it and took a wheel off. Others had spotted the Finn's Ford and avoided it.

Leading in Finland, Meeke flew higher and further than his rivals, then damaged the engine on his Citroen after a jump in Ouninpohja. Earlier in the year, he'd been let down by a broken engine in Corsica, and then came Germany.

He'd lost the brakes on day one, but got the car to the end of the stages using the handbrake. Then he punctured, and then punctured again on day two. As he was more than two-and-a-half-minutes behind Bernd Casier with half the rally to run, nobody gave him a hope. But Meeke got his head down and drove like the wind through Saturday afternoon, posting five consecutive stage wins to start Sunday morning 0.6 seconds ahead of his Belgian rival.

Later that day, he celebrated a big win in Trier with what might have been a career-saving drive, but it wasn't. A few months later, Meeke was dropped by Citroen and the wilderness beckoned.

But let's stay in Trier, as, two years on, it was a place of genuine triumph for Meeke. And six years after that, he met total disaster on the same streets.

After eighteen months out of Citroen, Meeke was struggling to put any kind of a deal together. But he fancied a shot at Germany again. It's always been one of his favourites and, in 2008, the world was talking about a new JWRC superstar with the kind of reverence reserved for Meeke a couple of years earlier.

For Dungannon read Gap. For Meeke read Ogier.

Citroen's new star had come in under the radar, but victory on two out of three of the early season JWRC rounds meant he led the title charge towards the vineyards, where Meeke was waiting for him.

The Frenchman's C2 S1600 should have wiped the floor with Meeke's outmoded Renault Clio S1600. But it was the other way around as Meeke took Ogier to the cleaners and was well clear of the man who would walk away with the Junior title later that year.

Unfortunately for Meeke, age caught up with his car and he dropped five minutes in the last proper stage with an electrical fault. Few would remember what was one of the drives of his life.

But plenty could talk you through the final morning of the 2014 Rally Germany.

Latvala started the final day almost a minute clear of Meeke, but then crashed on the first Sunday stage. That left Meeke 8.4s up on Thierry Neuville. But then Meeke promptly crashed on the second stage. Disaster. A first WRC win - apparently on a plate in Germany that weekend - would have to wait.

This week, Hyundai team manager Alain Penasse said of Meeke: "He's got the speed and he's not somebody you would have sitting on the bench; he's like Jari-Matti Latvala: a driver who's not so consistent, but will win you one or two rallies a year."

Latvala bears comparison, but the driver many compare him with is the one who guided Meeke's early career: Colin McRae.

McRae came to the sport when bending metal was an accepted and largely acceptable side-effect of creating a world champion

There's no doubt, you can see McRae's input into Meeke - he shares not only the 1995 champion's ability for devastating speed, but also his unshakable self-belief.

But, after four full-time years at the highest level of rallying, still the stars steadfastly refuse to align for Meeke. By this point in his career, McRae was already a world champion, had fallen from grace and seen his stock start to rise again.

There are two crucial differences between Meeke and McRae. Lanarkshire's finest celebrated his biggest moment in the sport aged 27. At the same age, Meeke was mid-way through that boom-and-bust (but mainly bust) JWRC campaign.

The second difference is generational. McRae came to the sport when bending metal was an accepted and largely acceptable side-effect of creating a world champion. When Ford ran out of cash, Subaru stepped forward with another shed-load of shells for the Scot to crease.

And crease them he did, but he got faster and faster, and then he ruled the world. He then came close to being dropped by Subaru, but, arguably, only at that point did he truly learn how to drive like a champion.

Manufacturers have neither the budget (David Richards would rightly argue his Prodrive-run Subaru team didn't have the budget in McRae's early days) nor the patience to create another McRae. You could, of course, argue the case for Latvala, but that's for another column and another day...

Under McRae's influence, it was somewhat inevitable that Meeke would develop a pugnacious streak and, at times, that belligerence has served him well. Plenty would have thrown in the towel or declined the opportunity to rise again.

Meeke is one of the most single-minded rally drivers. He's given rallying everything and he's achieved plenty. Don't forget he won the Intercontinental Rally Challenge title in 2009, when it was a far better series than the European Rally Championship could ever hope to be. He edged Andreas Mikkelsen and Thierry Neuville in what was then a genuine WRC-feeder series.

That landed him a drive in Prodrive's Mini John Cooper Works WRC. But when the money ran out and the music stopped at the end of 2011, Dani Sordo grabbed the only seat available.

Still Meeke refused to give in. Still he plugged away testing a variety of Peugeots, acting as a general Groupe PSA gopher.

Then, in 2013, came his big chance - the keys to the third DS 3 WRC in Finland. One shot. One opportunity. Meeke rocked, then rolled.

He had one more chance that year in Australia. Meeke rocked, then rolled. Then rolled again.

Seeing Meeke, head in hands at the side of the road in Nambucca, you couldn't help but feel for him. The guy was trying so hard. But when he crashed again the next day, he made it all too easy for the doubters.

The same goes for Rally Argentina last year, when he crashed spectacularly while lying 14th after Citroen had rebuilt his car overnight. And the same goes again for Portugal earlier this month when he crashed spectacularly while lying seventh.

None of these were minor shunts. These were proper, chassis-twisting, spiraling rolls that had observers holding their breath momentarily, then breathing easily only when Meeke and Chris Patterson, or latterly Paul Nagle, stepped out and dusted themselves down.

The lesson Meeke most needed to learn from McRae was the one about how to hold position; how to get to the front of a rally and stay there - keeping the car, the tyres and everything in one piece.

There's no doubt Meeke has the speed of a world champion, but an apparent inability to accept second best has cost him dearly

It's so easy to forget how McRae mastered the toughest of tough rallies; how he mastered the art of winning slowly. Known within motorsport the world over for his pace, it was McRae's patience that really raised eyebrows later on in his career. But Rally GB 2001, where McRae famously crashed out, offers ample example of the leopards and spots analogy.

Arriving in rallying a little later than McRae (he started his first event aged 21), Meeke seems to have spent his career chasing time and his tail. This, you fear, is one of the biggest issues for Meeke himself.

By the time he landed his first full-time WRC campaign he was 34 and the clock was ticking faster for him than any of his rivals. He knew that and, unfortunately, he tried too hard. He tried to win every corner of every stage of every rally. The all-too-rapid passing of time meant there wasn't a moment for a measured approach.

But, what the heck was there to prove from seventh on the second run through Amarante in Portugal?

It's impossible to argue with Citroen team principal Pierre Budar's assessment that he didn't know what was coming next. There's no doubt Meeke has the speed of a world champion, but an apparent inability to accept second best has cost him dearly. Not for the first time, but quite possibly the last.

As time has passed, the oscillations in the Meeke rollercoaster have got wider. When the C3 WRC's engine failed, to end a storming run through Corsica last year, it could be argued that Meeke was at the top of his game. Unsackable, finally beyond reproach.

Four rallies later he was on the bench after being dropped for Rally Poland following crashes in the preceding three events. Also in 2017 he won Spain - eight rallies later and he's out the door. The highs were mighty, but this is the lowest low.

Is this the end for Kris Meeke? Of course not. He's always fancied a shot at the Dakar and his name was mentioned by more than one of the teams at Silverstone's GB World Rallycross event last weekend. The prospect of a gnarly Meeke arguing over an apex with the current WRX titans is genuinely exciting. His natural ability would surely carry him to the top.

Maybe that's the future. He will be a world champion, but he'll just have to add the word 'cross' to the title. Right now, that couldn't be more appropriate.

If this is the end of Meeke's WRC career, it's a good time to say thank you for the memories: Monte Carlo 2014 and the first podium; Argentina 2015, the first win. And, oddly enough, most memorably, for a trip around a Silverstone rally stage in a Citroen Dispatch van.

If time's up, as Meeke said himself, "The sun will still rise..."

Here's to the next bit.