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The rally legend Colin McRae always got up and walked away. However big the crash, no matter how many bones he had broken or bruises he sustained, the world’s most celebrated rally driver seemed indestructible.

So the news that he did not walk away from a helicopter crash on Saturday afternoon while landing at his tranquil mansion outside Lanark appeared inaccurate. Sadly not.

How could a man who had lain trapped upside down in a smouldering rally car with fuel dripping all over him or escaped from a violent barrel roll across the Sahara desert succumb to a crash in his back garden? Heroes die in heroic circumstances. Not at tea time one late summer afternoon outside a small Scottish town.

Tragic ending for McRae, superhero and clown

A personal reflection on Colin McRae, the talented world champion with a passion for his sport, pranks and fatherhood

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BACKGROUND

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BACKGROUND

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Exceptional sportsmen and women are dubbed heroes with too much ease. But, however monumental their achievements, most know that, whatever happens in the field of competition, the odds are good that their sport is not about life and death.

McRae’s great British rally adversary, and England’s first world rally champion, the late Richard Burns could never understand why the British press and public lauded McRae so vociferously. So when McRae broke his little finger in a crash and was told he would have to have it amputated or miss the next rally, and chose the amputation (thankfully never required), Burns realised how McRae had earned his hero status.

Colin Steele McRae was born in Lanark in 1968 to Jimmy and Margaret McRae. His father was a rally driver and Colin got hooked on speed from the moment he could walk, first on motorbikes and then in rally cars. When Colin was first in class on his first rally in 1985, Jimmy quickly suspected his son’s talent would eventually exceed his own. But in case it did not, Colin had to train as a plumber.

His first rally win was in 1988. His navigator was his childhood sweetheart and later his wife, Alison Hamilton. In 1989 McRae had made fleeting appearances on the World Rally Championship, finishing an astonishing fifth in New Zealand.

McRae was British rally champion in 1991 and 1992, but his stratospheric rise to stardom came in 1993. David Richards (a world champion rally navigator in 1981) had run McRae in his Subaru team in the British series and believed his raw talent and his fiery style were world title material.

New Zealand was where McRae’s magic finally earned victory on a round of the World Championship. Over one mammoth 40-mile timed section called Motu, McRae annihilated the best rally drivers in the world.

In 1994 he won again in New Zealand and also at home on the RAC Rally. McRae mania hit the British press. Despite creating such evocative rally cars as the Mini and the Ford Escort, Britain had never had a world rally champion. The pressure was on McRae to bring the crown to the UK for the first time.

Trouble is, McRae crashed as much as he won. He famously did more than £1 million-worth of damage to Subaru’s cars in one year and earned the back-page moniker “McCrash”.

Richards fought hard to control his wild protégé. McRae not only pushed the boundaries in a car, he enjoyed life to the full. He was well known for practical jokes and pranks more associated with a touring rock star than rally driver.

In 1995 McRae’s Subaru team mate, Carlos Sainz, looked as if he would take the title until McRae won Rally New Zealand and was second in Australia. By the final round of the season, in Britain, the two were level-pegging on points.

In the fog and rain of a British winter, McRae stayed calm and used his local knowledge to out-drive and out-psyche the Spaniard to win in Chester and rack up enough points to clinch the world rally crown.

Millions of fans had lined the forests, millions had watched on television and the next morning millions read about Colin McRae’s awesome antics with a rally car over breakfast. The legend was born. Within months the Queen had appointed him MBE.

As world champion, McRae was offered the chance of a job swap with then Formula One driver (and now ITV commentator) Martin Brundle. Each would test the other’s car. In the Jordan Grand Prix car, McRae was phenomenally quick round Silverstone. His legendary car control allowing him to save a potentially disastrous slide on to the grass and set a time that had onlookers suggesting he should give up rallying for Formula One. McRae knew he could make the swap successfully but believed he still had more to give to rallying.

In 1996 and 1997, McRae nearly pulled off two more world titles. But mechanical problems and his “all or nothing” style robbed the Scot of points. Frustrated, he moved for a record £3 million to Ford to drive their new Focus, but success was as erratic and McRae was starting to be written off as a has-been.

In 2001, six years after taking the crown, McRae arrived in Britain for the season finale. The title was his to take. But he cut a corner too tight and destroyed his car and his championship dreams on a forest track in the Rhondda Valley.

Citroën paid Fomula One money to bring McRae to their expanding team in 2003, but with rally cars getting more and more advanced technologically and McRae’s skill at its most dynamic in cars with more brawn than brains, he struggled to match the pace of his team mate and rallying’s current star, Sebastien Loeb. At the end of 2004, after more than a decade at the top, McRae bowed out of the World Rally Championship having earned a place as one of the sport’s all-time greats.

There have been dallies with the WRC since. In 2005 he nearly won Rally Australia for Skoda and made a guest reappearance for Citroën in Turkey in 2006. Both times coverage of the WRC spiked.

McRae used his new-found time to try other events like the Paris-Dakar Rally and Le Mans. He even went to America to look at the chance of trying Nascar racing. His last appearance at a leading motor sport event was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July.

One of the perks of his career was an association with one of the most successful computer/video driving games, Colin McRae Rally. Ten million copies have been sold.

More than anything, semi-retire-ment gave McRae the value of time at home with his wife and young children, Hollie and Johnny. Tragically, Johnny died with his father in his helicopter when it crashed on Saturday.

Colin McRae is survived by his wife, Alison, and daughter Hollie.

Colin McRae, MBE, rally driver, was born on August 5, 1968. He died on September 15, 2007, aged 39