Tommi Makinen flying high on the first day of the rally.
John Upham's Network Q
RAC Rally homepage has daily reports on the rally.
You've probably read the daily updates from John Upham's pages so I'll just add my comments on the rally with some perspectives for next year.
This year's RAC Rally had many losers and few winners. To start with the losers, there is Toyota, which was excluded from the whole event. We got the taste of next year with only three works teams competing in the WRC and we saw the kind of one-team dominaton it may result in.
The second loser for the whole latter part of the season has been the RAS Ford team which really hasn't been up with the other teams. I definitely hope they can find a cure for their problems for next year as WRC with only two competitive teams is not very attractive an idea.
The third loser in the RAC was Mitsubishi who started the rally with high hopes. Tommi Makinen started the the second day in the lead but he hit a log, which he claimed had been lifted from the ditch up to the side of the road by the spectators, on the first stage of the day and had to retire. At this point Mitsubishi's hopes for the manufacturers title were gone. Kenneth Eriksson continued challenging the Subarus but he too went off later, which is a thing he very rarely does.
Tommi Makinen flying high on the first day of the rally.
But there were also winners in the Mitsubishi camp. Portuguese Rui Madeira took the win of gr. N in his first RAC Rally, confirming the gr. N titles for himself and for Mitsubishi. Isolde Holderied, who also drives a Mitsubishi Lancer, won again the FIA Lady Cup title this year.
Nobody could have predicted the success of Prodrive Subaru this year. Their greatest winner is if course the new world champion, Colin McRae. His dominance in the RAC was overwhelming. The fact that he had to change a tire on the longest special stage of the whole WRC series, losing 2 minutes in the process, and still managed to catch Carlos Sainz, who didn't have major problems during the rally, just speaks for itself.
Carlos Sainz didn't have an entirely trouble-free rally
either. On the first day he damaged the radiator on a watersplash which
resulted in engine overheating.
Notwithstanding all the things that have happened in WRC lately, McRae's championship title was a victory achieved purely by personal merit. His win doesn't leave any room for speculation. He was so fast that without a doubt he would have won it even if Toyota wasn't banned. He did win it regardless of the team orders in Catalunya.
Colin was fast when he came to WRC. He soon became even faster, and when he learned also to keep it on the road, there was no stopping him. And he is only 27 years of age, this could be just the beginning.
There were some more winners in the RAC. Richard Burns did a superb and mature job securing the third place for Subaru. Alister McRae comleted the McRae family success by finishing fourth with the privately entered Ford Escort Cosworth. Gwyndaf Evans won the F2 category for the second year in succession, beating for example gr. N winner Rui Madeira on the very muddy and slippery roads with only front wheel drive. Second in F2, Jarmo Kytolehto was also quite impressive.
What the next year will be like, nobody knows. The prospects certainly aren't very good but we'll see. It'll be the last year of the event rotation trial so some great rallies like Monte Carlo and RAC won't be on the calendar. Anyway, as the season starts in Sweden (and even before that) WRC Infosystem will again be reporting all the news from the world of WRC for you.
The
youngest WRC
champion ever, Colin McRae tackling the muddy conditions of the RAC.
1 Colin McRae (Subaru) GB 5h 09m 19s; 2 Sainz (Subaru) Spain +36s; 3 Burns (Subaru) GB +6m 31s; 4 Alistair McRae (Ford) GB +11m 15s; 5 Thiry (Ford) Belgium +11m 52s; 6 Evans (Ford) GB +32m 48s; WINS Formula 2 7 Madeira (Mitsubishi) Portugal +34m 45s; WINS Group N 8 Kytolehto (Nissan) Finland +36m 00s; 9 Kamioka (Subaru) Japan +41m 02s; 10 Oreille (Renault) France +41m 21s; 11 Kataoka (Mitsubishi) Japan +41m 51s; 12 Laukkanen (Volkswagen) Finland +43m 09s; 13 Curran (Ford) GB +47m 52s; 14 Holderied (Mitsubishi) Germany +48m 07s; 15 Head (Renault) GB +50m 04s;
1. Colin McRae 90 2. Carlos Sainz 85 3. Kenneth Eriksson 48 4. Francois Delecour 46 5. Tommi Makinen 38 6. Bruno Thiry 34 7. Andrea Aghini 26 8. Piero Liatti 21 9. Richard Burns 16 ...
1. Subaru 350 2. Mitsubishi 307 3. Ford 223
