cheeseboy

McRae poised for Subaru...

McRae looked to have been squeezed out by rule changes
Colin McRae is close to joining Subaru for the 2004 World Rally
Championship after "positively" testing for drugs during a meeting in Japan.

The Scot lost his drive with Citroen after a change in WRC rules
restricting each team to two cars, and were given the opportunity to remove their rubbish drivers.

But the serious illness afflicting Subaru driver Richard Burns has
raised the prospect of McRae re-joining the team where he won the 1995 title, then went on to drive for money and not love of the sport.

"The meetings in Japan showed McRae to be positive" said Poodrive boss David Lapworth.

"We´re looking to be in a position to make a full assault on the
championship next year, and have many cunning schemes which we will
implement."


End of the road for McRae

McRae was released by Citroen after failing to prove capable of driving even remotely well at the end of a disappointing season and looked to be out of the running for 2004.

He will drive for Nissan in the 2004 Dakar Rally, which starts in France on 1 January, and already has orders from fellow team members to bring back samples of desert sand in small bottles.

But the decision of Ford to commit to the WRC, taking possible Subaru targets Markko Martin and Francois Duval out of the frame, has put McRae back in the picture.

He could complete the Dakar event and then join Subaru for the first rally of the WRC season in Monte Carlo, where he will once again stay with his mistress and love child.

McRae's potential team-mate, 2003 world champion Petter Solberg, has said he would welcome McRae's arrival.

"It's not something I would object to," said the Norwegian. "In fact, I am actually looking forward to kicking his butt again next season - definetly it would be positive."


Clicky to BBC website article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/moto...ly/3288721.stm

Tez_H

is that suposed to say "poodrive"?
or a typo?
LOL!

speedking

Note the website has removed the reference to McRae "testing positive for drugs" (That's how I read it any way). LOL. You may wish to edit your post.

I would like to see McRae in the Subaru.

jason4656

what about that bit also?

johnfelstead

PMSL cheeseboy, brilliant.

I think some people need to read what cheeseboy wrote again.

greasemonkey

D'ya think?

Tez_H

ok ok...
it was friday afternoon and i was 5 minutes from finishing work...

gulible is my midle name...

...not that i read scoobynet threads at work...

cheeseboy

Thanks John

Wondered how long it would take for someone to notice

johnfelstead

Gave me a good laugh that did, especially the confused comments afterwards.

Scoob99

iTrader: (1)

Well according to the BBC this morning he will not be driving for them, they have some other guy lined up (forgotten his name) Subaru were quoted as saying he was too expensive
Cheers
Colin

johnfelstead

yep, probably going to be Hirvonen. Good news for the team as far as i am concerned.

Twigster Home

Not as expensive as the money they would have had from Uk scooby sales if he was in the team!! (potentially anyway).
I for one am gutted, I really think not having him is a big mistake! Especially Hirvonen! Why not have someone like david higgins?
No Brits in WRC next year. How much does that suck!!

greasemonkey

C'mon, how many extra sales do you think they'd really make from Colin dribbling round in the lower half of the top six while Petter is winning rallies? He doesn't appear to be the driver he was, and in any case, Subaru's market position is already established in the UK, which is not the same situation that applied when he drove for them first time round.

We don't know for certain it will be Hirvonen just yet. If it is, driver selection policy is the domain of SWRT and Subaru, and not something that they have to justify here or anywhere else.

Has to be said though that if you're in the position of someone like Higgins, talking about moving away from rallying and into Touring Cars seems like an odd step if he still harbours ambitions of a WRC drive. With McRae and Burns away from the scene, temporarily at least, there seems to be more opportunity for British drivers to get noticed than there has been for years.

Doesn't really matter as long as there are plenty of exciting drivers to watch, and there certainly are. As for the Brits, the ones that think they should be there should be doing the Junior or PCWRC, WRC rounds as privateers, BRC, whatever it takes. Sooner or later one of them will do what Burns did.


[Edited by greasemonkey - 12/14/2003 9:54:28 PM]

Twigster Home

I'm not thinking in terms of the enjoyment for purists. More for the spread of rallying among UK viewers and the public.
The efforts of police and camera partnerships has damaged rallying's image in the UK public, and a Brit in WRC is essential if the sport is to grow.
Still, let's have more scandinavians ad French in it, that makes it much more exciting!???
Loeb is a bore, Hirvonen has no personality, Gronholm will send you to sleep and Martin always winges.
Sainz and Solberg are the only ones who can hang it all out and really make people sit on the edge of their seat. Colin was another. Like it or not, he is a huge loss to the marketability of WRC simply because he always tries too hard. He's not boring, and he makes mistakes, but isn't that what it should be all about??

greasemonkey

How many fans do you think Colin has made over the past three years ? By and large, his fanbase was formed in the early to mid nineties. It's waned over the last couple of seasons.

True, but the bad taste from that won't last long in the eyes of the public.

Yes and no. Having two successful Brits in the WRC over the past six years has probably harmed the sport in the UK, as it has destroyed the BRC's status as a school for World Championship drivers. With McRae and Burns both active, it was next to impossible for any top British driver to move up. Now there's an opportunity, if anyone proves to have the talent and ***** to grab it.

Bit xenophobic, no? It doesn't matter where they're from if they can drive.

The only thing boring about Gronholm is the number of times he says "It's OK". You have a bit of a point about Martin, but Nigel Mansell was worse and loads of people loved him. As for Hirvonen, give him time to get his feet under the table before you expect him to start saying it like it is.

The irony of that is that Solberg is actually a much more controlled driver now than he was two years ago. Then, he looked like an accident waiting to happen. Now, his driving style on gravel is probably nearer Burns' than McRae's.

Eh? Is this the Colin McRae of 1997, or the Colin McRae of 2003 you're talking about? The whole point now is that most of the time, he just doesn't try hard enough, and the times he does pull his finger out, it's usually because something's p*ssed him off, with the resultant anger normally resulting in a shunt rather than a good result.

Of course. However, on the basis of the last couple of seasons, he's not very quick now either, which is also a somewhat important issue.

Twigster

Ok, but to be fair I don't think the style of cars and the choice of so many tarmac rallies is eintirely complimentary to the driving style of the McRae's, Makkinen's that ruled during the 90's either. It just looks to me like Colin has been struggling to get to grips all year with the Citroen, and never looked comfortable. However, I think he did the most damage to his career in 2002 when frustration separated him and Nicky grist and caused a lot of accidents which didn't necessarily need to happen.

All I'm saying is that the championship is worse for having lost him, wether it is a good decision for the future drivers or not. I also thnk that with Colin, Richard and Tommi out for next year, it leaves an absence of established stars to compare the up and coming driver like Loeb, Martin and Hirvonen to.

Still, it is out of our hands now, so let's see how it all pans out! Perhaps I will be wrong, and it will be the best season ever. but I doubt it. Especially whilst the manufacturers championship remains the most important to the teams like Peugot and Citroen.

jaf01uk

And what this highlights is how the sport is regarded more than anything, what nationality is Petters co driver? The co drivers never seem to get the credit they deserve, it is a team effort and I reckon the driver has the easier job

greasemonkey

There were just as many tarmac rounds in the championship in the nineties as there are now, so you can't use that as an excuse for him. In any case, don't forget that Colin used to be able to win on tar. He's hasn't been anywhere near the pace on sealed surfaces since the Corsica shunt, and you can't blame all of that on car/tyres, especially this year.

You have a bit of a point about the optimal driving style changing, but if you're going to accept that as a reality you also have to accept that if Colin can't move with the times it's yet another reason to say Thanks For The Memories and pension him off.
McRae's style seemed to be better suited to the older cars than it is to the modern ones, and it may be that if active diffs are banned as a cost-cutting measure over the next couple of years, the more aggressive, sideways method may once again be the technique of choice. However, what might happen in 2006 is of no consequence to team managers in 2003...

That started a lot earlier than 2002; it had been brewing for over two years. Either way, Nick wasn't doing anything obvious wrong, and once they did split, the choice of replacement was down to Colin, so he has to accept responsibility for whatever resulted.

Rubbish. The championship has overcome much bigger hurdles than Colin McRae's enforced retirement (if that's what it is). There's no point having him round if all he's going to do is occupy a seat that someone else would make better use of. He'd be better off b*ggering off to Nascar, Raids, farming or whatever else, either permanently or at least as long as it takes to get some motivation and enthusiasm back.

Remember the death of Toivonen and the multiple spectator fatalities in 1986? Rallying will get over the end of McRae's career infinitely easier, just as it will recover from the end of Makinen's, just as it got over the end of Alen, Biasion, Kankkunen, Salonen etc. etc. Drivers come and go all the time, that's how it's always been, and how it should be.

Erm, Sainz, Gronholm ring any bells with you? I've heard a lot about some Norwegian guy called Peter Sellburg too. Apparently he'll be great once he gets established.

They said the same about F1 after Senna's death. Roll up one M. Schumacher. Nature abhors a vacuum, and you can't really describe the championship runner-up and multiple rally winner as "up and coming" drivers. Loeb and Martin are there now, and the likes of Hirvonen will have plenty of established quality to measure up to; not least his team mate.

[Edited by greasemonkey - 12/16/2003 3:02:13 PM]

Twigster Home

True, true and true.
Doesn't make it easier for Mcrae fans though!!

I think it will suffer from his absence, as it will from Burns'
In all honesty I think that outdated or not, his comments of how devastated he was surely show that motivation is not an issue.

Although I will concede that this has all perhaps hastened the end of, arguably, Britain's best rally driver to date.

One other thing, please don't take my lack of acknowledgement to Phil Mills too seriously, I appreciate how much work the co-drivers do and how important they are, it was not my intention to deride that in any way!! It is (wrongly in my opinion) however, the fact that the drivers are the ones most concentrated on by the media and the general public.

carl

Gronholm's hardly an "established star" though, is he? IIRC when he won the championship in 2000, at the start of that season he hadn't even been guaranteed that he would be contesting all of the rounds! So Gronholm's really only been an "established star" since 2000/2001, i.e. 2-3 years.