In a world with increasingly short attention spans and fast-evolving trends, holding attention is no easy feat.
Everyone’s obsessed with the ‘next big thing’.
Jaspar Vaher staked his claim for that mantle in the rallying world last weekend, but he wasn’t the only one.
Granted, Max McRae isn’t a fresh face on the scene anymore (which feels ridiculous to say when he’s just 21 years old), but he’s rapidly becoming a complete driver with a newfound aura.
Gone are the days when he’s Max McRae – son of 1995 British Rally champion Alister, nephew of 1995 World Rally champion Colin and grandson of five-time British Rally champion Jimmy McRae.
Today, he stands on his own two feet. He’s just Max. And his performance at last weekend’s Jim Clark Rally was arguably his very best yet.
The way he won
McRae won seven of the 10 Jim Clark stages to win by half a minute
Winning last year’s Cambrian Rally as well as Rally North Wales prior to this year’s British Rally Championship season commencing, McRae and co-driver Cameron Fair were obvious title threats in their Škoda Fabia RS Rally2.
But their opening round, Severn Valley Stages, didn’t go to plan with a puncture restricting them to just fourth place.
How fast McRae would be on the Tarmac of the Jim Clark Rally remained a question too. He’d won the McRae Rally Challenge around Knockhill racing circuit in September, but that’s a far cry from high-speed closed road stages.
We needn’t have questioned it. Second place after Friday’s first two stages, McRae was utterly sensational on the repeat pass in the dark – winning SS3 Bothwell by seven seconds and SS4 Abbey St Bathans by six.
His performance was so good, his leg was shaking after the stage from the adrenalin!
That earned the Scot a 12.7s lead which he duly stretched to exactly 30 across Saturday’s six stages.
A commanding, controlled and calm victory was his.
“It was just nice,” McRae told DirtFish. “I didn’t feel like we pushed much on the first stage. I said that in the post-stage interview: it felt quite easy.
“The rest of the weekend, the driving just got easier and easier because it just felt so natural. The car was working well, the notes were really good, Cammy was working well as well. Honestly, it sounds stupid to say that it felt easy, but everything was just in a nice rhythm, so it just felt so nice.”
McRae slipped into that enviable zone where everything felt effortless. He had total belief in the package at his disposal, but also in himself, to deliver him a win his championship challenge needed.
“Everything felt so relaxed,” he confirmed. “It’s one of those very rare occasions where it just works so well. Even the road sections, we were just so relaxed before the stages. We knew the job we had to do. Then, obviously, your performance is a lot better, because you have that relaxed mindset.
“It’s a very rare feeling, but we’ve got that feeling now, so now we just have to try to do that on every event.”
McRae won seven of the Jim Clark’s 10 stages to move into second in the championship, three points shy of the leader Osian Pryce.
The progression
McRae and co-driver Cameron Fair have made strong progress over the last 12 months
It’s a common adage in rallying that as soon as the first victory comes, the second soon follows.
McRae would appear to fall into this category, but it’s not quite so simple. The DirtFish-backed driver says a combination of being in the right car and having more experience at Rally2 level is just as valuable as ticking off the first win.
“I don’t know about as a person, but I’m definitely maturing as a driver!” McRae laughed. “It feels very nice because I’ve always lacked that feeling of consistency and knowing that you can finish events every time. I’ve got no doubt that we’ll get to the finish line of every event. Now, it’s a question of what step of the podium are we going to be on, rather than ‘let’s finish it and get experience’.
“Before, I thought that it was a challenge in itself just to finish and get the experience. Obviously, when you get older, you do more rallies, the level gets higher and you can comfortably push more.
“It’s quite cool, to be fair, because you don’t really realize it [when it’s happening]. When you start looking back, I’ve not had a retirement since September last year at Ceredigion. The start of last year for example was a bit of a disaster, so the progression is pretty crazy on both surfaces.”
Where it used to be a positive surprise to see McRae in the fight for the win, now it’s the expectation – from within his camp as well as outside.
The competition
Winning against two or three other Rally2 cars isn't as impressive as at international level - but McRae is confident he'd stack up well there too
What counts against McRae, when considering his stock relative to other emerging youngsters, is where he’s competing.
Those close to the British championship know the level is high, but winning against a field of just two or three key rivals in a domestic series is not as attention-grabbing as doing so in the ERC or WRC2.
McRae knows this, but finding budget to compete at international level is a lot more restrictive than being able to put together a full championship bid.
“I’m pretty content that what we’re doing is pretty good at the moment,” he said. “At the end of the day, whatever you’re doing, you have to be winning, or you have to be in the top three.
“Especially in the British championship, you have to be on it, because it’s such short events. If you lose 15 seconds on the first stage, you’re really going to struggle to make that up. So it does teach you to be flat out from the first stage, and they’re not forgiving stages, especially the lanes. They’re slippery, especially the Jim Clark, it’s slippery, gravelly. They’re not easy rallies by any means, they’re actually probably some of the harder Tarmac rallies in the world.
I hope that we do get to go to an ERC or a WRC event this year, just to show what the improvement isMax McRae
“But I can see my own self-improvement,” he reiterated. “Compared to last year, when we were not far off the likes of Mille [Johansson], we beat Romet [Jürgenson] at Cambrian on pace, so stuff like that – and we’ve definitely improved since then. So it comes down to self improvement.
“I know we’ve come a long way and I think we would stack up against the top five or top 10 in WRC2, but it’s just not been shown yet. I don’t have the opportunity to. But I know on my own improvement that we’d be up there.
“So I hope that we do get to go to an ERC or a WRC event this year, just to show what the improvement is. Not to just go out and try to get a podium on the first event back, but just to get the mileage and the experience and show the improvement since last year.
“Because I think last year we really didn’t get to show what we’re capable of.”
The next event in McRae’s calendar is potentially August’s Grampian Forest Rally, after the next-scheduled BRC event, the Carlisle Stages, was cancelled.
McRae's next event is potentially in August, but he's hoping not to have to wait so long
The emotional factor
What made McRae’s performance at the Jim Clark Rally that extra bit special was the emotional weight of the entire weekend.
Everybody in the British rally community had the late Dai Roberts in their thoughts as the Jim Clark marked a year since his tragic passing at the event in 2025.
It was, however, particularly difficult for McRae who was one of three drivers on the scene of the accident last year.
To go out and produce such an assured victory, considering that trauma, showed the true strength of his character.
“I had it in the back of my head that I’ve not been back to Duns since that time, and it was actually quite weird arriving back to the service park because obviously last year was so difficult, and it was just bad memories from standing in a service park after the accident.
“It was almost like what Hayden Padden said in his recent interview about the Monte. You kind of just put it to the side, and then when you do revisit it, you’re like ‘yeah, OK, here we are.’
Max had Dai Roberts in his mind all weekend, and dedicated his victory to him
“When the rally is on you refocus, but before the first stage, Bothwell, was quite tricky, because we were driving past spots where I remember memories of Dai and James [Williams] doing tire pressures at the side of the road by themselves before heading into the stage, and they waved at you and stuff like that, so that was difficult.
“But at the same time, you have to put it behind you. You just have to. So at the end of the rally, it was kind of just like a big relief, and obviously because you’re trying to manage a lead for a day and a half. But that was obviously a massive part, was that relief. And then obviously you start talking about James’ family and the Roberts family, and obviously it’s hard not to get emotional.”
McRae welled up at the stop-line as he dedicated his win to Dai.
“Louise Roberts, Dai’s wife, was actually messaging me over the weekend saying ‘good luck and win it for the family’, which was very nice to hear because they’re supporting you on such a difficult weekend for them. So that was equally difficult but very, very nice to see.
“And I was speaking to James and his fiancée Adele a little bit over the rally and at the end of the rally, and everyone was kind of just rooting for us to win it after what we had last year at the scene. I think we were kind of the only ones fighting at the top that were actually at the scene of the event last year.
“So yeah, I think everyone was kind of rooting for us. I got quite a lot of messages, which were really emotional, but I’m just so glad we could win this one for Dai.”
