Interviews// Colin McRae - Life, Times and Gaming

SPOnG: And of course, there’s accurate damage modelling

Colin McRae: That’s all very realistic as well, although a lot less expensive.

SPOnG: How much did you get from the Colin McRae games, as they really helped make you a superstar.

Colin McRae: It’s a complete new audience, isn’t it? I was well known in the motorsport fraternity before, but then you get into a lot more households, and a much younger market. That’s been the really big difference – going from die-hard motorsports fans knowing you to people in the street who wouldn’t normally have a clue what rallying was all about.

SPOnG: Does that have an effect on the national rallying scene?

Colin McRae: I don’t think so. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I think in some ways the gaming situation in general can work against people getting involved in sport because they can play it to such an advanced level at home. For sure, I makes everybody aware of what’s out there and the level to which you can go.

SPOnG: What would your advice be to people thinking of trying rallying?

Colin McRae: Go to a rally school – there are plenty in the UK. Go to a rally school, join your local motor club – they’re always really helpful and welcoming. That’s really well set up, and if you really want to get into motorsport from that point, it’s really. Obviously, the more you progress, the harder it becomes and, unfortunately, an awful lot more expensive, which is the downside to any motorsport in comparison with golf, football, tennis or something like that.

SPOnG: What can you tell me about the R4?

Colin McRae: In a way, the easy bit was designing the car, and then putting it together. But making all of that work in reality, that’s where the hard work starts, and that’s where we’re at at the moment. There are still some changes to do in the general design. It’s quite a new venture for us – production is something we’ve never been used to. We’re still working on that – we’re working on the car. We’ve done very little testing with it so far, so we’ve got to do a lot more testing. If it runs well, we’ll be straight into a major testing programme, reeling the miles off to sign all the parts off. And then we can really concentrate on production.

SPOnG: What’s the target market?

Colin McRae: I think, ideally, it will be sort of gentleman, amateur drivers at a high level. In the long-term, what I would like is once we get a number of cars out there, and we’ve got these customers, to try and encourage them to get younger drivers into them and make our own series. Maybe to have a six, eight or ten-round series of rallies that could allow them to develop their skills more quickly than they would normally.

SPOnG: Like a Formula Three of rallying?

Colin McRae: Yeah. Then we could really monitor the progress of young drivers – and indeed anyone who drives the cars. We’d know for a fact that all the cars are evenly matched.