RAC Rally: Side by side for a quicksilver start

Two million fans will gather to witness McRae's flat-out drive for an unlikely second world title; Andrew Baker takes a fast track to the climax of the world championship

"It's not so fast, really," Mark Higgins, the British rally champion, remarked nonchalantly as the Nissan in which we sat leapt high into the air and crashed to the ground, heading straight for an earth bank. With a dab on the brakes and a twitch on the steering-wheel, he swooped the car around a hairpin bend and floored the throttle once more, aimed at a small pond. "This section, for instance," he continued, as the car displaced its own weight in water in great plumes to either side. "No more than 85 or 90mph."

Higgins was testing the Silverstone Rallysprint, a specially constructed stage adjacent to the British Grand Prix motor racing circuit that promises to be a highlight of today's opening skirmishes on the RAC Rally. The sprint is designed so that two rally cars can race mostly alongside each other over a figure-of-eight course arranged with spectacle and safety in mind. Six-thousand spectators are expected to throng the grandstands this afternoon - tickets were sold out long ago - to watch Britain's Colin McRae duel with his world championship rival, the Finn Tommi Makinen.

The idea is not completely new - it has been tried on other rounds of the world championship, and Silverstone has held dress rehearsals with national championships contenders - but it is the first time that such a stage has formed part of the RAC Rally, traditionally the highlight of the season for British fans and also the final round of the world championship.

The RAC proudly claims to be the most popular sporting event in the country, with more than two million spectators expected to watch the action in person over the next three days. Many will be attracted by McRae's hopes of a second world title, but the chance of success is slim: the Scot needs to win the event and hope that Makinen fails to score any points if he is to repeat his 1995 achievement.

McRae and his co-driver, Nicky Grist, have been pounding the byways of England and Wales over the past week, seeking intimate knowledge of the rally's route. "The weather has been foul," Grist reported, on a brief reconnaissance break. "Some of the worst I've seen for six months or so. But the work has to be done."

Grist has enjoyed his year with McRae, and insists that his partner's lurid reputation is no longer justified. "I was a little apprehensive at the start," Grist conceded. "When everyone was saying, 'Ah, you're joining McCrash'." An early and violent exit from the opening round of the championship, the Monte Carlo Rally, cannot have gone far to allaying the co-driver's fears. But since then, he says, McRae has given him little cause for alarm. "He's been very professional, very smooth. Only once have I had to have a word with him, when we had gone off in Indonesia and lost two minutes. Colin was trying to get the time back all at once and getting very ragged, very loose. I just said 'tidy it up a bit', and that was enough."

Grist's most worrying moment of the year is testimony to McRae's new- found sang-froid. The Safari Rally in Africa tests competitors' resistance to heat as much as their skills in the car, and all the crews take on as much water as possible before the stages. Sometimes, however, they take on too much. On the first stage one morning McRae found that he had overdone the liquid intake, and asked Grist to keep a hand on the wheel while he relieved himself out of the driver's side door. At the time, they were flat out in sixth gear...

Such measures should not be necessary on the RAC, where the longest stage is 28-and-a-half miles and saturation rather than dehydration is the order of the day. Of more concern to McRae and Grist will be the necessity to drive at 100 per cent throughout the three days of the event if they are to have any hope of overhauling Makinen for the world title.

A significant part of Grist's job description is positive thinking, however, and he is upbeat about their prospects. "There's no doubt that Tommi is in control," he said, "but on an event like the RAC, where there are so many different kinds of corners and different kinds of surface waiting to catch you out, we might be better off at maximum speed all the way. That way, your concentration is total all the time - really, we might as well just go for it. We know we start as the underdogs, and we know that second or third place is no good for us. We have nothing to lose."

Michael Schumacher went into the final round of the Formula One world championship in a similar situation. But on the RAC there are no opportunities for the kind of argy-bargy that caused such world-wide condemnation of the German after his antics at Jerez.

"No, there's no chance of that," Grist said. "On every stage the cars start two minutes apart. Even on the Rallysprint there are barriers between the two competitors, no contact allowed." Only the most cynical of spectators would wish it any other way - the kind who on the 1995 RAC placed logs in the way of the Spaniard Carlos Sainz, who was challenging McRae for the world title. The Scot has appealed to his "fans" not to try any such stunts this year. "More than anything, I want to win fair and square in the British forests where my career started," he said last week. "It will be a great fight down to the last stage, just like every event this year."

And this year, for the first time, the spectators at the Silverstone Rallysprint will be closer than ever to the action. As we rocketed past the concrete bridge supports under the course's flyover section, Mark Higgins murmured into the intercom: "When I said it wasn't fast, I meant compared to some of the straighter forest stages, where we can really stretch our legs. In its own way, this is still pretty challenging." He was changing rapidly up through the gears with one hand, leaning on the steering wheel with the other to drift the Nissan sideways through the tarmac turn that led on to the finishing straight. "And I suppose to the spectators it still looks pretty quick." It didn't look slow to the passenger, either.