McRae rally glee in Cyprus

13 April 2012

Colin McRae gave his chances of landing a second world title a massive boost with a Cyprus Rally victory which he admitted "went like clockwork".  

The Scot came out on top in his battle of Britain with England's Richard Burns for the second successive event.

McRae failed to gain a point from the first four rounds but is now back on course to regain the crown he claimed in 1995.

This triumph leaves him just seven points adrift of Tommi Makinen - who crashed out of this event on day one - in the World Championship standings and six behind his Ford colleague Carlos Sainz, who finished third.

And although the 32-year-old star began the last leg trailing Burns by three seconds, the outcome of their duel was never really in doubt.

It was purely through choice that McRae had been second rather than first overnight for he backed off on Saturday's final stage to avoid the disadvantage of running first on the road.

Burns was a most reluctant 'pathfinder', knowing his Subaru would clear the dust to the benefit of those following him, and as soon as the lead changed hands on the opening test it was clear that McRae's ploy had worked.

McRae steadily extended his margin and although the gap was trimmed from 20.2 seconds to 16.4secs on the final competitive stint, by then Burns was pushing simply to hold off Sainz for second place.

Monaco-based McRae has now won 22 World Championship rallies - only one short of the record - and revealed things could not have gone any smoother for him on a day he had anticipated being extremely tough.

"I thought it would be difficult and that I'd have to go as fast as possible but everything went according to plan," said McRae, whose father Jimmy won this event in 1983, long before it was introduced to the world calendar.

"I had no real problems. I looked after the car as much as I could and was able to take time out of Richard because of my better road position.

"But I thought it would be tight towards the end and I never really had enough of a gap to think it was all over.

"It was a fight all the way through and I'm very pleased that the result came right for me at the end."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in