Four names, one family.
The four names? The Castrol National Rally, the Elonex Rally, the Bulldog and Rally North Wales. And: Jimmy, Colin, Alister and Max. McRae.
Max McRae’s victory (with Cameron Fair co-driving) on Saturday’s Get Jerky Rally North Wales rewrote history. Not only did it complete a hat-trick of wins for the 21-year-old Scot – following his McRae Rally Challenge and Cambrian successes in the fall – it made the Welsh event the first to be won by four members of the McRae family.
As you might imagine, Jimmy was the first to succeed on what was then the final round of the 1980 British National series: the Aberystwyth-based Castrol National Rally. Driving a Vauxhall Chevette HSR, Jim was forced to give best to a hard-charging Tony Pond on the first half of the rally. Emerging from Pantperthog, the TR7 V8 was 11 seconds up on Russell Brookes’ Sunbeam. McRae Sr was third – but leap-frogged his way to the front when Pondy suffered a double puncture in Dyfi and the wheel studs sheared on Brookes’ car on the second run through Hafren.
Defending world champion Björn Waldegård was among the starters, testing tires on his Toyota Celica ahead of the forthcoming RAC. The Swede’s efforts to match the homegrown British talent were hampered by fuel injection issues on his car.
Twelve years on and Colin McRae arrived in Telford with a second British title already secured. His outing on what was then the final round of the British Rally Championship was all about RAC preparations, also the thinking behind Tommi Mäkinen’s presence in mid-Wales aboard a Nissan Sunny GTi-R. Coming into Wales, Bertie Fisher was the only other driver to have led a BRC round earlier in the season and the then Subaru-driving McRae was determined to make it a clean sweep of six from six British wins.
Colin McRae used what was known as Elonex International as WRC warm-up
The route for the rally had undergone significant change, becoming an overnight event, starting with a brace of runs around Weston Park on Saturday evening before diving into Hafren at two o’clock on the Sunday morning. McRae and Mäkinen went at it for the duration of the event, emerging from the final forest stage in Dyfnant just three seconds apart – in the Finn’s favor.
Colin took two back on the third run around Weston, leaving him just a second behind with just the final shot at the 1.5-mile muddy asphalt test remaining. He did it by two seconds.
Alister had also tasted victory on that 1992 Elonex, winning Group N in the Shell Scholarship Ford Sierra RS Cosworth 4×4. The overall win for the younger of the two brothers came six years later, when Alister dominated the Bulldog Rally aboard a Subaru Impreza WRC98. A longer read on the 1998 event can be found here.
And then to Saturday and a victory for the fourth McRae – with Max’s win in a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 coming with just 2.3 seconds in hand over Meirion Evans’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally2.
The family history on a famous event organized by Wolverhampton and South Staffs Car Club is important, but even more important is his feeling with his new car and his preparations for what sits in wait next weekend.
The opening round of the 2026 British Rally Championship – the Severn Valley Stages – is just a touch further south in mid-Wales.
Will McRae force another reworking of history books this year? We’ll watch with interest.
But for now, be it the Castrol, Elonex, Bulldog or Rally North Wales, there’s one set of Welsh woods which will be forever Scotland.
