Max McRae scored his maiden British Rally Championship success with a confident, collected and cool-headed victory on Saturday’s Cambrian Rally.
Driving a Dom Buckley-prepared Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, the 21-year-old ended a near three-decade drought of McRae family success at British championship level – and he did it with a stunning and nerveless final-stage charge to victory.
Arriving into north Wales on the back of their maiden outright rally win at Knockhill (McRae Rally Challenge) just over a month earlier, Max and co-driver Cameron Fair were fastest out of the blocks to stun their British title-chasing opposition. Taking 5.9 seconds out of everybody through the opening 19-kilometre Clocaenog test demonstrated what the McRae day was about.
And through the world-famous, but wickedly treacherous Brenig and Alwen stages, that lead continued to grow. Only a right-rear puncture on the re-run of Clocaenog allowed defending Junior World Rally Champion Romet Jürgenson (Ford Fiesta Rally2) back in, with the Estonian carrying 0.1s lead into the penultimate stage.
Max picks up the story.
“We’d made a really good start,” he said. “The car was feeling fantastic, Dom and his team did an amazing job – the way it changes direction, everything felt perfect. I wasn’t pushing too hard in that first one, just kind of settling in. It was nice to take time out of everybody.
“Then it just felt comfortable. The conditions were nice, the stages were lovely and everything was looking good. There were some really sharp rocks around on the second run of Clocaenog and one of them caught us. We were about four kilometres to the end when I felt the tyre let go. Fortunately, the end of the stage was very fast, so we just kept it pinned and managed to contain the time loss to around 12 seconds. I was sure it was going to be more than that.
“I dropped a bit more time in the second-to-last and ended up going into the final stage needing to take 3.6 out of Romet for the win. By then the weather had really turned and the rain was coming down – we had a fair bit of water sitting in the ruts, it was proper Welsh forest rallying in the autumn. Cam and I just went for it and pulled nine seconds out of Romet for the win.
“That was such a special moment and really cool that we’d had that bit of extra pressure and come away with the result. Without the issue on the first stage of the afternoon, I feel like we had the event under control. This really felt like a breakthrough rally. The win at Knockhill last month was nice, but this was special. The last McRae to win a BRC round was my dad, when he won the Scottish in 1998. That’s like 27 years ago… I’ll try not to leave it so long next time!
“It’s also really cool to be talking about me winning a rally in this part of the world, fastest in Clocaenog stage… it was exactly this forest where Colin won the world championship 30 years ago. It’s a special day for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is the confidence this gives me. It was hailing when we were coming through that final stage, I knew what was on the line and we just pushed on and did the job. Everybody knows what Romet’s about and the speed he has, so to beat him on raw pace is nice. Very nice.”
