Lanark's Colin McRae maintained his lead in the Rally of Portugal behind the wheel of his Ford Focus World Rally Car oblivious to the wild rumours which suggested he was about to launch a career change and race in Formula One.
As the 30-year-old set a blistering pace through the narrow roads which criss-cross the Iberian countryside, dad Jimmy admitted he was
surprised by the reports which rattled the motorsport world yesterday morning.
Waiting for his former world rally champion son at the
service halt in Mortagau in the early afternoon, McRae Sr said: ''It's all news to me. I haven't a clue what all this nonsense is about. I spoke to him less than an hour ago and there's certainly no plans for Colin to undergo a career change at the moment.
''He's the fastest rally driver in the world driving for the biggest manufacturer in motorsport with the best car in the championship. Why, tell me, would he want to go into Formula One? I think you'll find something's been taken out of context.''
The facts behind the broohaha are simple and confirm the suspicions that someone has taken two-plus-two and come up with five.
Recently father and son McRae, Ford's head of motorsport in Europe, Martin Whitaker, and Stewart Grand Prix top men Jackie and Paul entered into a casual conversation over coffee. And, remembering that in all this the common denominator is Ford, who also supply the V10 engines to Stewart Grand Prix, Paul Stewart takes up the story.
''Sure we all talked,'' he explained yesterday, ''but it was to set up a project where we would allow our grand prix drivers, Rubens Barrichello and Johnny Herbert, to experience a Ford Focus World Rally Car and in exchange we'd let Colin have a go in our F1 car.
''It's as simple as that but someone's got hold of what they though was a good story and turned it into a better one.''
Whitaker, while happy to lap up the publicity the story generated for Ford, was keen to re-focus attention on the job McRae is being paid #6.5m to do.
''No-one doubts Colin's streets ahead of F1 drivers in terms of being a complete
driver,'' he said, ''but we're paying him to win the world rally championship and that's exactly what we want him to do.''
McRae seems to be on his way to collecting a second
successive victory in the Ford, but while he takes a 33sec advantage into the closing four stages today, he knows it would have been more if the final two stages had not been cancelled due to fears for spectator
safety.
''We'd had to back off on what turned out to be the last stage because our tyres were worn,'' McRae said, ''and we were all set to give it a real blast through the final two and eke out some more time.
''But there was no way through the vast number of people who weren't only lining the route, they were blocking it completely.''
Tucked in behind the Scot is Spaniard Carlos Sainz who McRae pipped here last year by just 2.1 seconds. The closest
finish in world rallying. There was further good news for the McRae family. Younger brother Alister, in a stunning thirteenth position overall, still leads the two-wheel-drive, two-litre class by 32.5 seconds from his Hyundai team-mate Kenneth Eriksson.
Rally of Portugal, FIA World Rally Championship (Round 4 of 14). Positions after Day 3 of 4: 1, Colin McRae/Nicky Grist (Scotland) Ford Focus WRC 3hr 23min 22.6sec; 2, Carlos Sainz/Luis Moya (Spain) Toyota Corolla WRC 3:23.55.6; 3, Didier Auriol/Marc Giraudet (France) Toyota Corolla WRC 3:23.57.5; 4, Richard Burns/Robert Reid (England) Subaru Impreza WRC 3:24.20.3; 5, Tommi Makinen/Repo Mannisenmaki (Finland) Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI 3:24.51.1.
F2: 1, Alister McRae/David Senior (Scotland) Hyundai Coupe Evo II 3:37.31.6; 2, (14) Kenneth Eriksson/Staffan Parmander (Sweden) Hyundai Coupe Evo II 3:38.04.1; 3, (16) Adruzilo Lopes/Miguel Borges (Portugal) Peugeot 306 Maxi 3:40.34.5.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article