Meeke: This one’s for Colin!

By Jim McGill

After three days of intense and exhilarating action, in many ways it shouldn’t have come as a surprise — given the torrential rain over the past 72 hours and the sodden conditions in the forests — that the inaugural RallyScotland should finish like a disappointing damp squib.

After 12 stages and the best part of 500 miles, the three-day event — the finale to this year’s Intercontinental Rally Championship — saw the Peugeot of newly-crowned IRC champ Kris Meeke and Skoda’s Guy Wilks start the final test separated by just 20.7secs.

But just as the excitement was mounting and the two main rivals slithered and splashed their way through the tortuos 22-miler at Loch Ard, and around 50 million people watching the live pictures on Eurosport around the world, the rally was denied a nailbiting finish when Dumfries’s David Bogie crashed and blocked the stage.

The 2009 Scottish champ, who started the stage in fifth but with tyres which he acknowledged were not suited to the treacherous conditions, spectacularly rolled his Mitsubishi seven miles into the stage. Thankfully, 22-year-old Bogie and his co-driver, Kevin Rae from Hawick, were uninjured.

Frustratingly for the organisers, the car came to a halt straddling the forest track with a sheer cliff face on one side and a dramatic 200-foot drop on the other. As a result, none of the following cars could squeeze past and the stage was immediately halted meaning the positions at the start of the test became final standings.

For Meeke though, the victory was an emotional one. The 30-year-old from Dungannon spent almost three years of his early career living with Colin McRae’s family in Lanark while the former world champ funded Meeke’s early driving.

big 0w3h5018 Meeke: This ones for Colin!

“This win, RallyScotland, is for Colin,” Meeke said at the spectacular prizegiving at Stirling Castle as tears welled in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for all the help and time Colin and the McRae family gave me.

“Of course it’s not the way we wanted to win RallyScotland. But I guess that’s rallying. Sure it would have been great for me and Guy to have fought it out to the end of the rally. He pushed me all the way and it was looking like being pretty close.”

Though no official times were made public, unofficial timings a third of the way through indicated Wilks was between six or seven seconds faster than Meeke before it was stopped.

But such has been Meeke’s domination this season that of the seven IRC rounds he has contested, he and Irish co-driver Paul Nagle won five — including Azores, Brazil, Ypres and SanRemo — and was second twice; 66 points out of a possible 70.

“It’s awesome, absolutely awesome. I’m going to take my time to savour it because I don’t think we’ll ever have another year like this,” he admitted.

Behind the duelling duo, local hero Alister McRae nursed his battered and bruised Proton Satria S2000 to third — the Malaysian manufacturer’s first-ever IRC podium — despite enduring gear problems through all today's six gruelling stages.

“Today was a nightmare,” the 38-year-old former Britsh champ said. “The conditions this afternoon were horrendous. It was a battle just to keep the car on the road for most of the time, but it’s a great result for Proton in only our third rally.”

With Bogie, who had been battling for fourth, crashing out, the top five was completed by the Mitsubishi of Belfast’s Jonny Greer and the Subaru of fifth-placed Jock Armstrong from Castle Douglas.