How far has Max McRae come this year?

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re enjoying this weekend’s World Rally Championship event in Chile as much as I am? If I can’t be out there competing myself, the next best thing is being able to watch the world’s best battle it out – there’s plenty I’m studying and looking to learn from them to implement into my own driving.

It’s been a few weeks since my last rally, so as the 2024 season nears its conclusion and we start to talk about 2025, now feels like a good time to reflect on just how far we’ve come this year.

The highlights have definitely been our two Junior ERC wins in Hungary and most recently at Rali Ceredigion. We’re the only other crew apart from Mille Johansson to have two wins this season so that’s a huge positive. Yeah, we had two bad rallies in Sweden and Estonia withthe crashes but, I mean, that’s rallying. And we’ve shown that we can come back from them and we can still win, so that’s the most important thing.

I think it’s especially important that we’ve had a win on gravel and also on Tarmac, so we’ve proven ourselves on both surfaces. In Hungary we showed we had themechanical sympathy to look after the tires and lookafter the car on such a rough rally. A lot of the other drivers were dropping out with mechanical issues andstuff so that was really cool to see our clever approach pay off. And in Ceredigion, Mille, Calle Carlberg and I were literally just flat out between us the whole rally. Calle unfortunately got a puncture but I managed to overtake Mille and get into first. To do that, especially in the UK, was pretty special.

Of course we would have loved to have won the championship but the improvement we’ve made this year is massive. I think the best result last year I got was a P5, and I was over the moon with that at the time. We wanted to win rallies this year, so to win two out of five events so far, I can’t complain.

One thing that I think can be overlooked is just how strong the pace in Junior ERC is. Naturally because it’s part of the world championship, there’s a lot more attention on Junior WRC but this is where the absolute fastest drivers in Rally4 cars are. I can tell you from experience that you cannot back off at all!

As an example, the long stage in Ceredigion was 26 kilometers, and granted there were a few places I could have improved but I don’t think I could have driven muchquicker without having a crash. And then Millie was 3.3 seconds quicker than me after 14 and a half minutes of rallying – and inthose Rally 4 cars, that really is nothing. You can lose four seconds by having a half-spin on ajunction with the front-wheel-drive cars. So yeah, the competition is pretty fierce!

Mille did the first round of the Junior WRC and he won it, he won themajority of the stages, and he thinks that the competition in the Junior ERC this year atthe top level was higher than the Junior WRC. It would maybe be biased of me to say that because I wasn’t in Junior WRC, but Mille didthe first round so he has a good idea. But either way, the competition in the Junior ERC this year has been pretty mental.

One of the areas I really feel I’ve made a massive step this year is in my approach to, and preparation for, rallies. Everything I’m doingin and out of the car is done to improve my rallying. I’m training heaps and I’m trying to do as much prepbefore the rallies as I can, and then just trying to be onthe ball on the rallies as well. I want to make a career out of it, so there’s no other way to approach my life. I’m still learning, there’s still so much potential left in me – especially in a Rally2 car which I’ve been fortunate enough to drive in the British Rally Championship this year, too.

To be honest I just can’t wait to get backinto it for the last round at the Cambrian. It’s so much fun to be in a four-wheel-drive car, especially the Ford Fiesta Rally2, it’s just next level. It’s been so much fun this year pushing the limits and trying toget up there with the quick boys at the front. And then of course, to work alongside M-Sport has been pretty game-changing, I’ve learned so much from them.

We really want to try and build on what we did at the Grampian, the last rally, where we managed a top-three stage time. In the morning, I was pretty tentative, I just wanted to get the seat time but Malcolm really wanted to see that the pacewas there and asked us just to go for it in the afternoon.

Unfortunately on one of the stages we had an intercom failure, but to be eight tenths off Chris Ingram and a couple of seconds off William Creighton – who was just off the back of two WRC eventsin that car while it was my first time on gravel in it – on the other, wedefinitely showed the potential is there. We just need to get more seat time in that car and keep building.

Ideally next year we will be in a Rally2 car. I feel like I’ve maximized what I can out of the Rally4 car so we need to jump up to four-wheel-drive permanently, and with Junior WRC unlikely after not winning the championship this year, I think going into a Rally3 car now would hold us back in terms of progression. Whereas if we jump into a Rally2 car, either in the BRC or the ERC, I think the progression will behuge. So Rally2 is definitely where we want tobe. Whether it’s possible, you will see, but that’s definitely what we’re looking at.

I can assure you that there is a lot more to come from me. This is still only my second year rallying outside of Australia, and although everyone is achieving success at a younger age nowadays I am only 20 years old. I’m reliably told that means I’m still young! But there’s 100% room for growth, especially in the recces and pacenotes and stuff. You learn stuff everyrally and I’ve done fewer rallies in my entire career than some guys have done in the past couple of seasons, so that’s really exciting to know there’s still a lot more to go.

Carrying the McRae name forward of course brings some pressure, but it’s an awesome privilege and I love meeting so many of you and learning things about my dad, uncle and gramps. But this year I feel like I’ve started to make more of a name for myself in my own right and that’s important too.

Thanks to all of my partners, not least Steve Rimmer at DirtFish, for making this journey possible. I’ve relished the opportunities I’ve had so far, but I really believe my story in rallying is only just getting started.