Max McRae is confident in his progress as a rally driver over the last 12 months. Now is his chance to prove it.
While this weekend’s Grampian Forest Rally is the third round of the 22-year-old’s British Rally Championship campaign, it’s also the FIA’s candidate event for Rally Scotland – which is poised to join the World Rally Championship calendar in 2027.
That means the international stars in town – namely M-Sport’s Rally1 driver Jon Armstrong, WRC2 pilot Romet Jürgenson, Lancia duo Yohan Rossel and Nikolay Gryazin, four-time American champion Brandon Semenuk and WRC leader Elfyn Evans, who will drive the stages but not in competition.
McRae, who’ll drive a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 alongside co-driver Cameron Fair, achieved his first BRC podium at the Grampian 12 months ago before going on to win the season-closing Cambrian Rally too.
This year he’s already won the non-championship Rally North Wales and Jim Clark Rally, and almost won last month’s Scottish Rally before a mistake on the final stage.
Becoming the fourth McRae to win the British Rally Championship would be a major coup and a PR dream, but his aspirations are bigger. The opportunity to compete against the world’s best drivers and show the wider world what he’s capable of is not lost on him.
McRae has the chance to measure himself against WRC drivers for the first time this week
“Yeah, 100%,” Max told DirtFish. “I’ve been looking forward to this event for pretty much the whole year because I knew that we’d have quick guys coming over for it.
“It is a bit of an opportunity to show what we can do without going to a WRC or an ERC event, which we’ve not been able to this year.
“We’ve not had the budget to go and prove ourselves this year on that level, so we’re actually almost lucky to be getting this opportunity to show what we can do on home soil.
“We’ve got to be realistic, many of the visiting drivers were competing in Finland last week and are obviously operating at a super high level. But we’ll at least be able to see where we against them.
“I’m confident we won’t be that far off them, but beating them would be a big ask – especially considering we’re looking at a championship.”
Armstrong will be a particularly intriguing benchmark for McRae, considering he’s a Rally1 driver and the partner of Max’s cousin, Hollie McRae.
McRae's primary focus is his British Rally Championship battle. Currently Osian Pryce (right) leads
“Jon told me he’s scared that I’m gonna beat him…” Max teased. “He’s asked what the roads are like, but he’s got access to onboards and stuff like that because M-Sport has been at this event for the last few years, so he’s got he’s got more than enough information.
“He said to me he’s going to just be driving around to get the experience, but I’m not sure if that’s just him bluffing until the helmet goes on. But we’ll see. Either way he will be a good benchmark for me because I’ve been testing with him side by side in Rally3 a few years ago, so we can see if I’ve improved!
“It’s just cool to be driving against Rally1 drivers and top guys from the WRC.”
The Grampian Forest Rally will use similar stages to Rally Scotland, but is based in Milton of Crathes rather than Aberdeen’s P&J Live. Ten stages – two on Friday and eight on Saturday – decide the event, which is riding on the crest of the WRC wave.
“I think the hype around this event is bigger than the ERC in Wales,” McRae added. “Especially with all these guys coming over, it’s just such a cool thing.
“Even like the Facebook comments and all of that, everyone’s just really excited to see these guys here and to compare them to us and the British Championship guys.
“Just to have these guys in the service park and doing these stages before next year shows the level that it’s going to be at in 2027. It was only four or five months ago that the rally was been announced, and we’ve got factory teams like Lancia and Toyota turning up to do this British championship event. It’s pretty cool.”
