Colin McRae chuckles at the suggestion that some of his biggest fans don’t even know he is a real person.
He can afford to chuckle, even when reminded that he’s been laughing all the way to the bank ever since his entry into the world of video games.
To millions, McRae is a rally driving superstar in the flesh; arguably Britain’s greatest ever driver, the winner of a record 25 World Championship rallies and the 1995 world title.
To others, he’s the brand name on the world’s best-selling motor sport video game, the latest version of which, Colin McRae Rally 2005, hit the stores recently to the delight of PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC game enthusiasts across the globe.
It’s a fact that many of them, oblivious to the existence of the World Rally Championship and its main protagonists, think Colin McRae is a marketing label only. When you search the web for his name, most of the 440,070 listings are for the game, which is reviewed relentlessly, like one of the latest offerings from Stephen Spielberg or Bill Gates.
But is it true that the real Colin McRae earns one dollar, or is that one pound, for every game sold? “No it’s not that much,” he says, convincingly. “I wish it was. But it’s been tremendously successful. It was something I got into without really knowing what to expect.
“We thought sales might be affected this year because I’ve not been driving in the World Rally Championship. But a lot of the people who buy the game don’t even know I’m real, so it hasn’t mattered.”
It certainly matters to McRae that he has been forced to sit out the WRC this year. Not that he has been exactly loafing about. First he did the Dakar Rally. Then there was Le Mans, the legendary 24-hour endurance race which was much more difficult. Now comes the UAE Marlboro Desert Challenge, another new event for McRae, and one he is certainly not taking lightly.
“From what I know there are probably more sand crossings in the Desert Challenge than in the Dakar, so it will be a very tricky event for me,” he says from his car’s hands-free, his kids giggling in the background. “We’ll be warming up for next year’s Dakar obviously, but it’s a great event in its own right and we’ll be going for the best result possible. It won’t be easy though. The local drivers will have a much better idea of where they’re going than I will.”
So where exactly is he going? Will it be back to his beloved World Rally Championship, which had no place for him this season and is currently in the process of reinventing itself?
“The door’s not shut,” he says. “I’m talking to a few people about next year and there is potential. But nothing’s definite. The championship is a bit up in the air at the moment with rule changes and proposed rule changes, so nobody is quite sure what’s going to happen and the teams aren’t making commitments yet. But it will settle down in a few months and I’ll get a clearer idea.”
And the changes? “I agree that it should be three drivers per team, not two,” he says.
It was the WRC that first brought McRae together with Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the 14-times Middle East rally champion who will be his host in the UAE next week as the organizer of the Desert Challenge.
They first met back in 1992 when Sulayem entered the WRC in a Group N car. Just before the San Remo round in Italy, Sulayem flew off to the FIA headquarters, then in Paris, and persuaded motor sport’s world governing body to include the Desert Challenge, just a year old at the time, in the World Cup for Cross Country Rallies from 1993.
“He’s a top-class driver who dominated rallying in the Middle East for a long time. I’m looking forward to meeting up with him again, and driving in his event,” said McRae, whose co-driver in the UAE Desert Challenge sounds like a rock star. At least her name does. Swede Tina Thorner will be belting out the instructions to guide him through the 2,020 km that make up the route, having helped him become the first Briton in 14 years to win a car stage of the Dakar back in January.
In fact, he won two in the Nissan pick-up, and will be back for more next year. “It was a great experience, and not particularly difficult,” said McRae.
Not a monster then, and almost a doddle compared with Le Mans. “Yes, that was very, very hard,” admits McRae. “Harder than Dakar. But I did it with Prodrive, who I knew well from my WRC Subaru years, so there was a nice atmosphere which made things easier for me because there was a lot to learn in not much time.”
“I’ll possibly do it again. It depends on what happens with the WRC next year. It would be nice to go back to Le Mans because you learn so much the first year that could help you next time.”
First, though, it’s the UAE Desert Challenge. The closest thing about the event to the Le Mans circuit is the 2 km Nakheel Prologue, a spectator super stage, at Jebel Ali Racecourse on Oct. 10. The next morning the rally heads out of Abu Dhabi for the Empty Quarter and the serious stuff, with five days of spectacular desert terrain to negotiate for McRae and Thorner in the Nissan pick-up.
They will be in good company, with more than 120 other drivers and riders from 42 countries in the hunt for glory in the World Cup for cars, and World Championship for bikes.
Nice idea for a video game, Colin!
