The monkey’s gone. The duck’s broken. The weight of expectation sits ever so slightly lighter on those broadening Scottish shoulders. Max McRae is a Junior European Rally Championship winner.
Talking to the 19-year-old is always an adventure. He’s the very definition of a good chat: light-hearted, interested, interesting and happily irreverent – he’s a typically zany teen who’s loving life. There were definitely times when that shifted last year, when the smile thinned. The self-belief remained, but the nagging nonsense hung like a cloud. When, demanded social media, was the win going to come?
Saturday and Sunday good enough for you? McRae’s win on the season-opening Rally Hungary was a testament both to his speed and to his ability to drive quickly, slowly. For years, the world reckoned that was something way beyond his Uncle Colin, only for the 1995 world champion to win Safari after Acropolis after Safari.
McRae bided his time early doors
It’s far too early to rank Max alongside the generations of the world’s most famous rallying family above him. But Hungary’s a very good place to start.
Going into the event, McRae junior, junior had talked about the opportunity new rallies would bring and Hungary’s shift from asphalt to gravel demonstrated his potential given a level playing field. There are plenty of drivers who will feel aggrieved at the punctures suffered on the rough roads, but McRae’s was a middle-of-the-road drive when the boulders abound. When it was cleaner and quicker, he went quickest and cleaned up.
Saturday afternoon was something of a watershed moment for the Peugeot 208 Rally4 driver. He went into day one, loop two safe in the knowledge that nobody had a better tire package than him. He’d rotated the four on the car and left two spares untouched. Not only did that give McRae more grip, it gave him the mental boost that accompanies a plan coming together.
As Saturday gave way to Sunday and the temperature cranked up a degree or two – both metaphorically and meteorologically – McRae was more than a match for the moment. He stroked the Tagai Racing Technology-run car home without putting a mark on it.
Stepping out of the car at the finish, there was the trademark big, wide smile and not a bead of sweat on the boy. Everything he’d invested across the winter paid dividends in Veszprém.
“It’s been a fairly long off-season,” he told DirtFish. “Of course you want to be in the car and testing as much as you can, but that’s just not possible. What I could do, what I could control was my fitness – I worked harder than ever between the seasons. It’s really satisfying to come here and drive without any kind of [physical] effort.”
Knowing that you’re going into a stage in prime condition generates more confidence and self-belief.
A fitter Max McRae is a faster Max McRae, as Hungary demonstrated
“This [win] has felt a long time coming,” said McRae. “We came close last year, we should have won last year, but this is very, very special. And it’s special because we really had to think about the event – we knew it was going to be rough, but we didn’t think it would be quite this rough.
“This definitely wasn’t the sort of event to drive flat out everywhere. It was about being more strategic with both your attack and the use of the tires. Cam [Fair, co-driver] and I worked really hard after the recce, we came up with a plan for Saturday and it worked; we wanted to get through the first morning on one set of tyres and that was a key factor.
“The biggest thing was knowing where we could push and how hard to push. That’s what we did in stage six, we had a really good run and from then on it was about managing the speed and the gap. We were able to take more time through Sunday, the car felt fantastic. I have to say a very big thank you to the Tagai Racing Technology Team. Getting in a car you know is strong enough and as well prepared as this one is makes all the difference.
“Going into that final stage was a little bit nerve-wracking – we had a big, big lead, but I also wanted some Power Stage points. Like the rest of the event, we picked and chose our moment and took points in there as well. Coming across the finish line in that final stage, the feeling was pure awesome.”
Victory number one is in the books. Are there more to come?
But what about the bigger picture? The monkey? The duck?
“I honestly feel like this result has lifted a weight from my shoulders,” he said. “There’s nothing to prove anymore. We came here with a plan, we felt we could win with that plan and, finally, everything has gone our way.
“This is a great way to start the European Rally Championship season – we go to round two in the Canaries next month in the lead and with confidence. Fantastic.”
