Colin Steele McRae, MBE (5 August 1968 – 15 September 2007) was a British and Scottish rally driver born in Lanark.

The son of five-time British Rally Champion Jimmy McRae and brother of rally driver Alister McRae, Colin McRae was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion and, in 1995, became the first British person and the youngest to win the World Rally Championship Drivers’ title, a record he still holds.

McRae’s outstanding performance on the Subaru World Rally Team enabled the team to win the World Rally Championship Constructors’ title three times in succession in 1995, 1996 and 1997.

After a four-year spell with the Ford Motor Co. team, which saw McRae win nine events, he moved to Citroën World Rally Team in 2003 where, despite not winning an event, he helped them win the first of their three consecutive manufacturers’ titles.

He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to motorsport in 1996. McRae died in 2007 when the helicopter he was piloting crashed near his home.

The accident also claimed the lives of his son and two family friends. In November 2008 he was posthumously inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.

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Known affectionately as the Finnish Grand Prix, the rally turns the student city of Jyvaskyla into a motorsport Mecca on the first weekend of August as fans converge in their tens of thousands to savour the dramatic action on the compacted gravel stages and lap up the party atmosphere.

Few non-Finns have triumphed on the event due to the specialist nature of the stages with their endless series of twists, corners and jumps. Marcus Gronholm, a seven-time Neste Oil Rally Finland winner, famously said: “You need courage but the pacenotes have to be perfect because they tell you where to place the car on the road before taking off flat-out over a blind crest. You have to have maximum trust and faith in your co-driver.”

When multiple world champion Sebastien Loeb won the event for his first time in 2008, he said had never taken such huge risks to defeat Mikko Hirvonen and revealed prior to the 2010 rally that he would never do so again. For the record he triumphed for a second time last season following another stunning drive.

Neste Oil Rally Finland bosses are currently finalising the route of this year’s event although it’s likely to begin with a number of stages on the afternoon of Thursday 2 August.

[Source -  http://www.wrc.com]

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As the seventh WRC event of 2012 – significantly, also the 500th WRC event of all time – wrapped up in downtown Auckland today, 24 June 2012, the Citroen team celebrated their fourth one-two finish of the season with their second crew of Finns Mikko Hirvonen and Jarmo Lehtinen finishing in second place, just 29.6 seconds behind Loeb and Elena. The two Citroën crews enjoyed an intense battle throughout the three-day event which took competitors from Raglan, west of Hamilton, to the northern city of Whangarei and back to the rally’s base in Auckland.

The Ford World Rally Team crew of Petter Solberg – who is hugely popular with Kiwi rally fans – and Chris Patterson kept fighting to end, finishing third, just over a minute behind Hirvonen.

The final day took competitors to Puhoi and Kaukapakapa north of Auckland for some high speed stages as well as two quick blasts around the narrow tarmac roads around the magnificent Auckland War Memorial Museum and Auckland Domain.

Loeb said: “It’s a great victory! It was a long weekend with some very difficult conditions. The big, big fight with Mikko for the weekend was not easy, but we are here now at the end of the rally.”

Hirvonen described the weekend as fantastic. “We had such a great fight for the first two days. It was really important to get the speed back again because in Greece I wasn’t happy with my driving so now it is good again and right before Finland which is good.”

Solberg scored two bonus points in the power stage and said: “We came here with a good car and a big opportunity but unfortunately Friday’s mistake ended our hopes of a win. That was sad for the team, but a podium is still a good result. The key today was to stay calm to secure third, and taking bonus points in the power stage was a good ending. We need some luck and make sure we’re fully prepared for the next rallies to try to secure that elusive win at last. The speed of the car is fantastic and everyone in the team is pushing hard for victory, so I’m confident it will come soon.”

The M-Sport Ford pairing of Russian Evgeny Novikov and French co-driver Denis Giraudet secured a well-deserved fourth place.

Fifth went to Frenchman Thierry Neuville who flew through Sunday’s stages, winning three stages outright. Neuville was making his New Zealand debut with co-driver Nicholas Gilsoul and made the most of the opportunity to drive the Qatar World Rally Team’s Citroën normally driven by Nasser Al-Attiyah. With their speed today, the French pair snatched fifth place from another crew rallying in New Zealand for the first time, Estonian pairing Ott Tänak and Kuldar Sikk in the second M-Sport Ford Fiesta RS world rally car.

After Tänak rolled in stage 17, Spaniard Dani Sordo came home sixth in the first of the Minis while fastest qualifier and early front-runner Jari-Matti Latvala finished seventh for the Ford World Rally Team. Sordo and Latvala each won two stages today – with Latvala’s power stage win proving the Finn with three bonus points. Two-time PWRC champ Armindo Araujo, from Portugal, bought another Mini home in eighth, American star Ken Block was ninth in a Ford and Austrian Manfred Stohl, in his first WRC event since 2007, was tenth in another Ford.

The honour of being the top New Zealander finishers went to Hayden Paddon and John Kennard, who also won the Super 2000 World Rally Championship by a margin of more than 33 minutes over Proton driver Per-Gunnar Andersson. The Kiwi stars experienced yet another day of frustration as broken suspension hampered their efforts in the first three stages, then a puncture slowed the pair on stage 20.

While pleased to move into the lead of the SWRC, Paddon admitted he’d hoped to achieve a lot more on his home event. “Yes, I’m pleased to have bought it home, but it was a frustrating day especially when then rear suspension broke just as we were trying to chase down Manfred Stohl. I definitely feel there’s more to come with the car as we haven’t got the setup and balance quite where we want it yet.”

It’s interesting to note that as the winner, Loeb took four hours, four minutes and 51.2 seconds to complete 413.94 km of competitive stages. Tenth-placed driver, Stohl, was only 11 minutes and 26.3 seconds slower than Loeb across the three days while Paddon, who finished 12th overall in a less powerful Super 2000-spec car, was only 15 minutes and 26.2 seconds behind Loeb while also contending with various mechanical issues on two of the three days.

Richard Mason, from Masterton, took a commendable 13th place overall and a strong win in the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship, powered by Brother (NZRC) field. After battling with Dunedin’s Emma Gilmour throughout the first two days, Mason was able to extend his winning margin over Gilmour on the final day largely due to Gilmour having limited brakes during the early stages. Gilmour then holed her radiator and elected to drive conservatively over the final stages to be sure of completing the rally to secure her best-ever result – 14th – in the WRC event. Christchurch’s Matt Jansen continued the solid run he’d enjoyed in the first two days to come home third in the NZRC field and 15th overall.

Argentinean driver Marcos Ligato took the Production World Rally Championship class victory, his first win in the support category since 2001, and 16th overall.

WRC competitors enjoy a short break before the 3 to 5 July running of Rally Finland, an event which also sees Paddon and Kennard back in competition in their Skoda Fabia S2000 car.

[Source - rallynz.org.nz]

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Greece returned to the WRC schedule in 2011 after missing out in 2010 when its absence was keenly felt, not just by the fans that descend on the event in great number, but also by the drivers. The Acropolis is one of the most iconic events in the sport and winning it earns significant kudos.

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According to expert opinion, the fourth round of the 2012 IRC ranks among the most difficult tests on the calendar. The selective route across the entire island of Corsica sees to that, with 14 demanding special stages that are each solely run once.

Moreover, this year’s strongest field of participants awaits Gassner Jr, with 21 S2000 teams. The key data of Rally Corsica: 318 kilometres in 14 special stages, overall distance: 318 kilometres.

Hermann Gassner Jr. is aware of the difficulties of this task and considers it a great opportunity:

“Even though it’s going to be my first Rally Corsica I still presume that the narrow and twisty roads should suit me,” he said.

“Tyre failures, however, are always a possibility here, and we’ll have to pay close attention. I want to complete a faultless rally and orientate myself towards the best drivers in the IRC.”

BRR team principal Raimund Baumschlager added: “This rally is in the same league as WRC events and definitely the most difficult tarmac test in the global rallying calendar.

“An additional challenge – each of the 14 special stages will be run only once – and that’s why perfect pace notes are particularly important for this rally.

“From Hermann I expect another improvement and, ideally, a faultless rally. Thank goodness my winning car of the previous round of the Austrian rally championship is completely undamaged – so we’re ready to dish it up.”

[Source]

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Once Sebastien Loeb had given himself a fright with a major moment on stage nine, team boss Yves Matton quite wisely decided that enough was enough – particularly with Ford’s Dani Sordo, Citroen’s closest challenger, more than a minute away in third.

And so the call came through to Loeb and Hirvonen to calm their antics down. Loeb would have his 70th career victory, to consolidate his lead of the drivers’ championship (which remained miraculously intact despite his failure to score in Portugal) and reinforce Citroen’s grip on the manufacturers’ standings.

But even once Citroen had decided to end the duel between their drivers, a result was by no means in the bag. Argentina proved to be just as tough as 500 kilometres of stages had promised, with the feel of the event being more like a mini-Dakar Rally than an extended world championship event.

The weather conditions didn’t help: late April is the Argentine autumn, with talk of ice and snow on some of the higher stages. Even Sebastien Loeb spun three times on Friday morning: an event that is about as a rare as the dodo.

This is why the decision to halt their battle was sensible but probably a touch unfair on Hirvonen: he definitely had the measure of his team-mate in Argentina, feeling more comfortable on the slippery sections in particular. A lot of that was down to tyre choice, with the crews having to decide when to make use of their limited allocation of soft compound tyres, especially over the long stages.

With the crews not allowed to cut the tyres to disperse extra mud either, caution was the watchword in Argentina. And once again, that was probably what let Ford down. According to Petter Solberg, there was a rock right on the racing line that couldn’t be avoided.

But it was just unfortunate that he happened to be in the lead at the time it showed up, and that once more it led to a brief retirement. “We’ve thrown it away again,” is all team principal Malcolm Wilson could say once he heard the news.

However, Solberg’s sheer tenacity – a hallmark of his career since he burst onto the WRC scene as a fresh-faced blond youngster in 1999 – is still keeping him in the thick of the championship, despite all those off-road excursions. This last incident could have been a big one – and yet, Solberg has once again gathered it all together and walked away with some valuable points. It also keeps the manufacturers’ championship fight alive as far as Ford is concerned.

So despite the appearances, this championship is a long way from over yet – even though Jari-Matti Latvala is spending more time undergoing physiotherapy than driving rally cars right now following his broken collarbone. If the rumours are to be believed, and Latvala is ultimately heading for Volkswagen (although the reality is that nothing has been signed yet) Dani Sordo has also done his future employment prospects a world of good with his weekend’s work in Villa Carlos Paz. Because he can deliver what Ford desperately needs at the moment: consistency without ill-considered risks. The fact that he didn’t quite deliver the podium is largely irrelevant: it was as good as secured.

The Argentina experiment also proved that Solberg and Sordo work well together as a team: we may just have seen a foretaste of Ford’s 2013 line-up…

However, Volkswagen should also be getting a much clearer idea of how it could work for them next year following Andreas Mikkelsen’s stunning performance in Argentina. It was also a frustrating end for him, but the point has been proved: no other young driver will take the fight as consistently to team leader Sebastien Ogier as Mikkelsen will, and Volkswagen need look no further for their number two. In a field that thinned out progressively, the battle between the two Fabia drivers was a real highlight of the action.

And action was something that was never lacking in Argentina, which was the longest WRC event since the 2002 Safari Rally at just over 500 competitive kilometres. Matadero-Ambul, at 66 kilometres, is going to be the longest stage of the world championship this year, but being wide and fast it wasn’t actually the most challenging stage, which was instead probably the 51.88 kilometres of Ascochinga-Agua de Oro.

This stage was tighter, slower, rougher, and with much worse weather, which made it a typically Argentinian challenge. The watersplashes in particular were a constant hazard, capable of stopping drivers in their tracks. Not even the experience gained from similar roads on the Dakar could prevent Nasser Al-Attiyah, for example, from falling prey to the treacherous conditions. And he was in esteemed company.

But as Nasser himself pointed out, Argentina had something very special: helped by the enthusiastic army of fans who turned up in even greater numbers than normal this year, clinging to the hillsides despite weather conditions that frequently bordered on the anti-social.

This underlined the fact that the FIA’s thinking on endurance stages – to turn every rally into an adventure – is working. With stages of this length and complexity, dramas are bound to happen. However, this also has the effect of increasing the gaps between competitors: the gap from second to third was three minutes, and third to fourth nearly seven minutes. So it’s old-style rallying, with the focus frequently on survival rather than performance.

That’s exactly how it used to be: while the Group B cars of the 1980s are eternally revered as the fastest and most spectacular cars ever to grace the world’s stages, the irony is that there was absolutely no way that their drivers could have gone flat-out from start to finish, because the cars were just too fragile. But mashing a throttle pedal is the easiest thing in the world. The art of driving lies more in knowing when to lift off it.

[Source - WRC] (2212)

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Act one: the swashbuckling French hero mishears ‘right’ instead of ‘left’ and promptly ends up in the trees, under cover of darkness. That was a show-stopper as it was: you’d have to go back to Greece in 2009 to find the last time that Sebastien Loeb crashed out of a rally and into retirement.

In fact, he’s even more consistent than his team-mate, rally winner (for a while at least) Mikko Hirvonen, who hasn’t destroyed a car since Finland 2010 – although to be fair to Mikko, he did a pretty good job of it at the time.

So the strength in depth that Citroen benefits from is simply awesome, which makes up for the fact that the DS3 WRC is not actually the fastest car out there. In Portugal, the MINI John Cooper Works WRC set more fastest times than the Citroen – which was not too difficult, as none of the top three set a fastest stage time at all: surely a record, albeit a slow one.

The MINI was just one of the surprises of the rally – along with the fact that not one, but two, Fords threw away the lead on Friday. There was no need for either driver to be pushing: particularly because Hirvonen (in third place at the time) was in front of them on the road and they could monitor his split times.

To be fair, conditions were extremely slippery and it’s not as if either driver had a huge accident: they just suffered the sort of small mishap that people often get away with. But the timing was unfortunate, to say the least. As the team’s technical chief Christian Loriaux put it: “we had an opportunity handed to us on a silver plate, we threw the plate in the bin, and then buried the bin.”

And then, many hours after the rally had finished, the event stewards exhumed the bin, fished out the silver plate, and handed it back to Ford.

But that doesn’t alter the reality of the situation. It’s now been three incidents in four rallies for Latvala. Equally he’s quite capable of winning every event from now on – provided that he keeps it out of the scenery. In terms of raw pace nobody comes close: even his team-mate Petter Solberg suggested that Latvala “must have left his brain in the service park” after he set a blistering pace in the Qualifying Stage.

However, the fastest driver isn’t necessarily the best driver. That accolade still belongs to Sebastien Loeb – whose only weakness seems to be occasional selective deafness. “The braking was correct, the speed approaching the corner was correct, even the angle was correct – it was just the direction that was wrong,” quipped Loeb on Friday, with the easy-going confidence of a man who knows that this is just a minor setback.

Normal service will be resumed in Argentina, but Loeb’s misfortune just underlines how damaging retirement can be to your championship prospects. This is why Ford can only kick themselves at a missed opportunity, although fourth place – which then became third – for Solberg was a remarkable save under the circumstances, which owes a lot to the good fortune of Friday afternoon’s stages being cancelled. Had they run then he would have had an extra 15 minutes of penalties and been nowhere.

If however Solberg loses the championship by 10 points or less, he’ll look back at this event with even deeper regret. There would, in theory at least, have been the option of boosting Solberg up to second at the end of the rally (which would have become first) by shifting aside Ford privateers Mads Ostberg and Evgeny Novikov. The fact that Ford and M-Sport team principal Malcolm Wilson didn’t is either laudable or risky, depending on your perspective. And it would have been slightly bizarre to have had a winner care of Rally 2.

Novikov was one of the star acts of the whole drama. Having battled a broken throttle pedal, the young Russian made Denis Giraudet the oldest co-driver ever to stand on a WRC podium. Giraudet’s legendary career has taken in 170 WRC starts, and he’s claimed podium finishes with a total of seven different drivers. But you get the sense that this one is going to be special, coming 10 years after the last one. “Some people need cosmetic surgery to help them stay young,” said the 56-year-old. “But all I need is Evgeny. There’s no limit for him…”

As for Ostberg, the bemused winner, he kept his head while all around were losing theirs. His was a quietly impressive rally, but he never thought for a minute that he would end up on the top step of the podium. “We just couldn’t live with Mikko – he was in a different league,” said Ostberg.

And yet it’s Ostberg who is going home with the biggest trophy, having comprehensively proved a point. The youngsters aren’t just knocking on the door – they’re already beating it down. As well as the podium heroes, Estonia’s Ott Tanak also showed stunning pace over some of the trickiest stages that we will see all year. Or so most of the drivers hope, anyway.

The FIA WRC Academy also proved that the future of the sport is in safe hands, with Northern Irishman Alastair Fisher taking a resounding victory on the opening round of this year’s series. If you thought Portugal was difficult in a World Rally Car, try it in a two-wheel-drive car that has half the horsepower. The amount of mud meant that some cars fell off even on the road sections, and there was no soft option tyre either to help the youngsters out. Yet somehow Fisher managed to keep it on the road. Not just him, but every driver who managed to do that over the last four days, deserves a curtain call.

[Source - www.wrc.com] (929)

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Heading into its sophomore season in the WRC, the Fiesta is looking to build on the surprising success it had last year when it won the season-opening and season-ending races as the successor to the Ford Focus WRC.

Just like last year, the Fiesta RS Rally Car comes with a 1.6-liter Ford Ecoboost turbo engine and has been designed with the Blue Oval’s acclaimed ’kinetic design’ styling language. The car was prepared for rally-spec use by Ford’s long-time partner M-Sport and as has been the case for years now, Castrol remains the team’s primary sponsor.

The Fiesta RS’ surprising showing at the 2011 WRC season has given the team high hopes for a better showing this year. If for nothing else, the team should give perennial title-holder, Citroen, a serious run for its money.

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