The frustration was obviously building. Robert Reid was already out the car, helping the spectators free the Impreza from the bank of snow it had recently made acquaintances with.
“Come on, f***ing hell,” Burns exclaimed to himself. “Push, push, push!” – his hands moving backwards with increasing energy, in tandem with the words falling from his mouth.
Plainly, this was not what the Englishman had in mind for his first stage back in a Subaru.
But he was far from the only one. The 1999 World Rally Championship season offered a new beginning for many, but served up a sour start for plenty.
For as unpredictable as the Monte Carlo Rally has continually proven to be – particularly in changeable weather conditions – few editions have ever begun quite as dramatically as 26 years ago.
Pre-event, all the attention was on the brand-new Ford Focus WRC and the driver the ‘blue oval’ had opened the cheque book for to drive it: Colin McRae. The 1995 world champion was far from the only man on the move, though.
Four-time world champion Juha Kankkunen essentially swapped with the Scot, fleeing Ford to partner Burns at Subaru – Burns himself changing teams from Mitsubishi. Freddy Loix was to be Tommi Mäkinen’s partner at the reigning world champions.
McRae and co-driver Grist were signed to spearhead Ford's new era with the Focus WRC
Toyota lost Loix but otherwise remained unchanged with Carlos Sainz – fresh from his final stage heartbreak in 1998 – and Didier Auriol.
Like Kankkunen, Bruno Thiry traded Ford for Subaru, displacing Piero Liatti who found a new home at Seat as team-mate to Harri Rovanperä. Škoda also joined the championship with Armin Schwarz as its lead driver alongside a host of Czech stars.
The Octavia’s debut would be rather premature however, with the 1999 Monte delivering the drama before it had even technically started. On his way to the start ramp at Casino Square, Schwarz’s car lost drive and he was stranded on the spot. Škoda also retired team-mate Pavel Siberia as a precaution.
Out to the stages then, and plenty of drivers had a point to prove. Sainz to avenge his world title loss; Auriol to establish intra-team status; McRae to prove the worth of his Ford move and Burns to show he could be Subaru’s new McRae.
The run from Plan de Vitrolles to Faye was a brutal way to open the season on Monday, January 17. At 30 miles, it was comfortably the longest stage of the rally – and to make matters worse for the drivers (but better for everyone watching), the weather had done its thing.
Off launched Mäkinen in his updated Evo VI Lancer (now sporting a predominantly red paint scheme); the then three-time world champion the first to discover the evolving conditions.
But even before the Finn had let rip, he’d been in the wars. A collision with a gate on the road section damaged the brake cooling pipe on the front-right corner, and on such a long stage Mäkinen began to lose brakes as he completed the stage in just over 34 and a half minutes.
Mäkinen didn't have the perfect stage, but he'd feel a lot better about when he learned how his rivals fared
The only thought that must’ve gone through his and co-driver Risto Mannisenmäki’s minds was ‘how much time have we lost?’ Little did Mäkinen know how futile a concern this would prove.
This fateful stage started on dry Tarmac but very quickly the conditions deteriorated – the snow banks formed on the outside, and inside, of corners providing clues to the grip left on the road.
In short, there was none.
Sainz would be the first to find that out to his cost. Co-driver Luis Moya told TV reporters the snow was supposed to be 7km in the stage: “But that was when the gravel crew went through,” he pointed out. “Now it might have melted.”
It hadn’t, and just 44s into his 1999 season Sainz’s Corolla had left the road, crunching into a gravel crew’s car (which had already gone off earlier) as the Spaniard slid off a treacherous corner. Manpower got the Toyota back on the road, but the damage wasn’t just to the timesheets: the hood was heavily crumpled on the left side, compromising the two-time champion’s view of the road.
Worse was to come. A few minutes down the road, Sainz lost all grip in the slush and understeered wide on what, on a dry day, would’ve been an innocuous kink. But on this day, the road-side snow sucked Sainz in and a telegraph pole was waiting to catch him.
Game over.
Ford new boy McRae was next onto the stage, unaware of the demise of his old foe. He wouldn’t be immune either, albeit not through anything of his own instigation.
Encouragingly, the new car looked quick out the box (as five stage wins later in the event would prove), but testing had been limited and that showed on the brutal curtain-raiser. The engine cut out in the first half of the stage, bringing the Focus to a stop before McRae and co-driver Nicky Grist coaxed it back into life.
McRae was not immune from the mayhem, losing three minutes on the opening test
But refusing to give its crew an easy ride, the Focus developed another problem as smoke started to enter the cockpit.
A problem that would easily have been rectified with the benefit of more testing, the exhaust was burning the paint on the underside of the car – meaning the car didn’t have enough heat shielding.
Over three minutes were lost – but again, one more former and one future world champion were set to have it even worse.
Auriol enters the stage. A three-time winner of the Monte, if anyone was going to master these surprise conditions it was surely the Frenchman and Denis Giraudet.
But incredibly, what did Auriol do? Go off on the very same corner that Toyota team-mate initially did.
The 1994 world champion was, however, quick to deflect: “We had a little off, mistake of Denis,” Auriol told stage-end reporters. A predictable retort for anyone who’d seen his dismay when the car slid off.
“When he told me ice it was too late and we go off,” Auriol continued. “Terrible stage.”
Things really weren’t that bad for Mäkinen, were they? But back to Burns – the one who lost the most time of the heavy hitters that made the stop control in Faye.
Burns's season would pick up after a difficult opening round in Monte Carlo
Even before he’d got it wrong and ploughed his Subaru into a clump of snow, Burns had already been off.
“F*** sake,” he cursed, as the Pirellis locked up and transported the car into a guardrail. No real harm or damage done, that was reserved for the off further down the mountain pass.
Burns arrived to the stop-line at a similar time to Auriol, which at least meant he was quicker than him: “I went off the road very early on some black ice, I couldn’t slow down for a corner,” he recalled.
“And then another piece where I got two wheels onto the snow and I’m on the Tarmac tire so it went off into a ditch. It took me about two minutes to get out.”
Elsewhere, Loix’s Mitsubishi debut started disastrously as he careered into a bridge and wrecked his ‘Carisma GT’.
Ford’s partner for McRae in Monte Carlo, Simon Jean-Joseph, also failed to make it through unscathed, slivering off the road at near-walking pace and losing umpteen minutes as spectators battled to free the Focus.
In total, 18 of the 86 starters failed to emerge from SS1 – that’s over 20% of the entry – with Mäkinen’s rally lead booming at well over a minute already.
Jean-Joseph lost loads of time when he got stuck in the snow
It was a bizarre top-10 after the opening stage that featured Group N leader Yves Loubet and even the front-wheel-drive Formula 2 Seat of Toni Gardemeister.
On a one-off event in a Prodrive Allstars Subaru – paid for by Peugeot to keep its driver warm before its WRC return in Corsica that spring – Gilles Panizzi was second quickest and set about stealing the show to move into the overnight rally lead.
Superb tire choices were at the heart of the charismatic Frenchman’s rise, but a crash on the third day would poop the party.
By this point, Mäkinen and Risto Mannisenmäki were ahead anyway; Panizzi’s demise simply releasing the pressure as the world champion intriguingly recorded his first of an eventual four consecutive Monte Carlo wins, in a season that would net his fourth and final world championship.
The WRC had produced many dramatic tales before and even more since – not least on that particular weekend with McRae stripped of a debut podium with Ford for a water pump irregularity – but few rallies, or indeed seasons, have ever kicked off quite as dramatically as the ‘99 Monte.