Grist on McRae's 2001 heartbreak: 'It was a disaster – but the people loved Colin'

McRae had reasserted himself and taken the lead back from his Finnish foe by 3.5sec to start the final day in the lead – but then it all went wrong…

“We were confident that we could pull off the win,” remembers Grist. “But nobody could have foreseen the fly-by-wire throttle failing on the first stage of the last day. It seemed we always had issues of one thing or another on this very same side of the mountain, the Col de Turini.”

All was well with the stationary car, apart from the throttle simply not working. The frustration only grew for the Ford pair.

“Imagine us with sitting right on the apex of a hairpin, then being able to see Mäkinen drive up in front of us, take the hairpin and accelerate away with the lead!” laughs Grist. “And there’s us with a car just ticking over. It was the most frustrating experience. We were on the verge of winning the Monte Carlo.

“It rebooted itself and got going again, only for it to fail once we’d gone over the top of the Col and down the other side.”

Scenes of McRae kicking his Focus in frustration became well-circulated amongst WRC fans, but what happened next wasn’t captured.

“When it happened the second time you know, Colin was enraged,” says Grist. “He ended up throwing our tools at the TV helicopter that was filming us, hovering 200 meters to one side!

“We trundled down the road a bit more, but we had hardly any throttle. The team asked us to adjust the cable. Colin said ‘Where’s the spanners?’ and I said ‘We haven’t got any because you threw them off the side of the mountain!”

As Grist highlights, the randomness of Monte meant it was viewed as somewhat of a free pass, but the next round in Sweden didn’t end up much better, with the Focus embedded in a snowbank early on.

“Just a question of just trying too hard,” says Grist. “Sometimes, just being that little bit cautious, just getting through a situation and coming out the other side of it would have paid dividends. That one incident in itself cost valuable championship points.

“But in hindsight, you’ve got to try as well. You can’t just drive around.

“In the face of adversity, Colin would always push harder and harder where a lot of people would perhaps have a different approach.”

Mechanical failures put McRae out in Portugal and Spain too, meaning that after four rounds Mäkinen was leading the championship with 24 points, whilst Ford’s Scottish charger had none.

“But then we just hit some ruts just before a stage finish. The steering broke and we went straight off. We had to try and drag the car as best we could back over the finish line with the steering pulling at all angles…”

That was McRae’s Safari Rally done for, but a third at Rally Finland and runner-up finish to Richard Burns in New Zealand – “he played a blinder on that rally” – hauled the Scot back into contention.

He was level with Mäkinen once more on 40 points, with Burns now nine points behind.

Struggles for all the title contenders in San Remo and Corsica (McRae finished 11th and eighth respectively), with only Sainz and Burns picking up a handful of points across the two events meant the table closed up, but only slightly.

Australia came next, which the Focus pair were confident of doing well on, but an early running order meant the pair were subjected to road sweeping, creating a clear line for other drivers. It limited them to a fifth place finish themselves. Again no rivals scored big, apart from an ominous Burns, who took a runner-up spot.

The two points scored had edged McRae ahead again: he now had 42 points, Mäkinen 41 and Burns 40. The title race, after 13 rallies, was balanced on a knife edge, but now the Scot and Grist were heading to a finale at the perfect location: Rally GB, an event that for them felt like their rally.

“Support for Colin when you came to Rally GB was phenomenal,” says Grist. “The people loved Colin.”

McRae later admitted he was taking a Mansell-like boost in confidence from the home crowd.

“There was no doubt in my mind that we were going to win,” the Scot said in an interview years later.

Things started well for the pair who won the first stage in typical swashbuckling fashion.

“We did the super special down in Cardiff in the most horrendous conditions,” remembers Grist. “They’d made up this new stage on some waste ground in the Cardiff docks. We were leading, albeit only by 0.1sec. Burns was 2.5sec back. We could sleep well, whilst the others thought about our performance.”

Another stage win on St Gwynno followed: “We thought ‘Right, this is it, let’s catch them asleep’. The onboard footage from that run is probably some of the best onboard that you’ll ever see of Colin in full flight.”

Mäkinen then ripped apart his suspension on the same stage, meaning the title fight was now purely between McRae and Burns. Things were going well in Ford camp, not that it was satisfying born-winner McRae.

“We came out of the Tyle stage (SS3), having had a half reasonable run,” says Grist. “And we were getting the stage times and Marcus was quickest. Then Didier [Auriol], he’d beaten us too, and Richard had taken 0.1sec out of us. So we were still leading the rally, albeit by 0.2sec.

“Colin said ‘F*ck, f*ck, f*ck! We’ve been beaten by all these guys.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. The two guys that were dramatically quicker in there, we’re not in a battle with them for the championship. All we need to do is keep Richard behind us.”

Grist was trying to keep his man calm, but this was proving more and more difficult as they headed towards Rhonda, the third stage.

“Colin said ‘but we need 30sec if we have a puncture of something.’ I replied ‘Well, get 30sec at the end of the day. But no way that we are we ever going to get that sort of buffer on one stage. It’s impossible!’

“All of a sudden some fog had blown in. Richard always had very detailed pace notes, so he was always pretty quick in fog – he’d once taken 30sec out of us at Rally GB ’97. Colin’s notes were based more on speed, what he could see, but when he couldn’t see he didn’t have the detail in the notes to allow him to ultimately commit to them.”

Things were getting tense inside the Focus: “I just sensed a bit of urgency in the driving from Colin. A little bit more aggression, a bit later on the brakes. From that point on [start of SS3], we just seemed to get quicker and quicker.”

As the Focus flew through the forest, past the log piles and legions of McRae fans, the pair were about to strike catastrophe dead on.

“About three kms later, there was a series of very fast corners, with the pace notes coming at you like bullets – ‘bam, bam, bam!’

“Colin said later that he picked a line and he was just cutting the apex a little bit. He had a choice of changing it, should he have wanted but thought ‘No, it’ll be OK.’

“But through this little bit of grass on the inside, there was a hole. We just slammed into it, and it just started to corkscrew us through the air.

“Then it was a series of sky – trees – road – tree – sky – road. We were barrel-rolling down the road, eventually coming to rest on our wheels the way we came.

“The bonnet was buckled, there was steam billowing out from under the bonnet. That, basically, was it. The World Championship was finished, a sad end to what have been a very good season.”