The Jardine Lloyd Thompson supported Tuthill Porsche driven by 1979 World Rally Champion Bjorn Waldegard with regular JLT co-driver Pauline Gullick in the passenger seat finished second overall on the Colin McRae Stages Rally. The fifteen invited drivers competed against each other in their own class. Former JLT driver Alister Mcrae and Campbell Roy won the event with Hannu Mikkola and Nicky Grist third and Ari Vatanen and David Richards in fourth place.

Pauline Gullick reflects "I never thought I would be on the podium alongside former World Rally Champions. This has been an incredible few days bringing back memories from the 70's when I competed in the same teams as Ari Vatanen and Hannu Mikkola. Bjorn and I had a trouble free run in the Tuthill Porsche, it was an incredible experience being driven by the Swedish ace. As we started the rally we hit heavy traffic and as we approached the first spectator stage were amazed by the number of spectators, car parks were full and people were walking miles to see their hero's in action. I cannot remember seeing so many spectators and I have been told that the atmosphere on the stages was something else. The camaraderie amongst the invited drivers was amazing. Who would have thought that Andrew Cowan, the oldest driver on the rally, the man who won the London to Sydney Marathon driving a Hillman Hunter in 1968 would be competing against Amercian Superstar Travis Pastrana. The thousands of spectators who travelled to Scotland were not disappointed as they not only saw these drivers in action they also had the opportunity to meet them in person and many autographs were signed. We were all there in tribute to one man, the legend Colin McRae"

This article has been published on www.wrc.com


The Colin McRae Forest Stages rally

This sort of thing doesn't happen very often. A local car club by the name of Coltness decides to invite a celebrity driver to take part in the Colin McRae Forest Stages rally to mark the anniversary of his tragic death. Within a few months, the idea has snowballed and the greatest-ever line-up of rally legends has been assembled to drive a selection of classic WRC cars from the 1970s and 1980's.

Suddenly the local car club is organising and hosting an event featuring names such as Hannu Mikkola, Bjorn Waldegaard, Ari Vatanan, Andrew Cowan and, to maintain the family connection, Colin's father Jimmy and brother, Alister. Oh, yes, and 35,000 spectators.

The weekend starts with all the rally legends assembling in the clubhouse of the local horse-racing track. It looks like a scout hut, which sets the tone for the whole event - many of the greatest names in the history of rallying in a completely informal setting. All the drivers are at their ease and are happy to reminisce.

We chat to Hannu Mikkola about his London - Mexico rally win in 1970. His longest stage was an epic 12 hours, 20 minutes and the pace could be leisurely by modern standards. His Escort was designed for reliability and so did not use the usual competition-spec 16 valve twin-cam engine - it stuck with the standard pushrod engine from the lower end of the Escort range tuned to give just 130 - 140 bhp. However, that was at sea level: as the route rose to 4,000 metres, Mikkola had to stop and adjust the jets in the carburettors to compensate for the thin air (otherwise the oxygen-starved fuel mixture would have burned through the pistons). Mikkola reckons the car was down to just 65 bhp at the highest point. Imagine a car with two occupants plus all the rally gear (including a heavy 'roo bar to protect the front of the Escort) trying to climb a steep track with less power than a modern Ford Ka.

Not that the lack of power made life easy for the drivers - they had to work extra-hard just to eke out whatever performance was available. Meanwhile Andrew Cowan told us about his career that included one of the unlikeliest victories in rally history - the 1968 London - Sydney rally which he won in a Hillman Hunter. For those too young to remember, the Hunter was possibly the most mediocre four-door family saloon you could buy at the time: it made the contemporary Ford Cortina look like a paragon of engineering excellence.

On the day of the rally we position ourselves on one of the hairpins in the beautiful Scottish forest and it is immediately obvious that the great names are not content to rest on their laurels. They are keeping Colin McRae's memory alive by using his 'maximum attack' driving style, with the boots of the cars threatening to overtake the bonnets on every corner. Last night's promises to take things easy and enjoy the experience are lost behind the red mist: these guys are racers and the fact that their passports show they are mostly in their sixties is neither here nor there.

By lunch time, three of the 14 elite drivers are out, while Kris Meeke, one of the younger elite drivers, has destroyed the nearside front of his Escort in a huge accident (Kris was thankfully unharmed).

In the afternoon, we take up station on the last stage and it becomes clear that the competition between the drivers is becoming even more intense - the cars are going sideways even on the straights. The scene is set for a thrilling showdown as Alister McRae is only fractionally ahead, but then there is a serious accident involving Colin's father Jimmy. He rolls down a bank and some busybody of a spectator calls the fire brigade, apparently unaware of the concept of 'race marshal'.

A fire engine duly arrives which leads, inevitably, to chaos and the abandonment of the stage. However, the mood is lightened when it is announced that Jimmy is unharmed and that Alister has been declared the winner - the result that 99% of spectators wanted to see.

At the post race dinner, no less than £36,000 is raised by a charity dinner, while Bjorn Waldegaard reveals himself as the man you would least like to interview, with a sense of humour drier than a desert rally. Asked why rally drivers love Finnish roads and British roads so much, Waldegaard replies tersely, "I love Swedish roads." Pressed by the interviewer who is now digging himself in deeper with each question, Waldegaard deadpans, "I hate Finnish roads, they bred all the rally drivers that tried to beat me." When we asked him when he had decided to take part. "Oh, when I read in the papers that I was competing" said Waldegaard airily and wandered off.

And so an extraordinary weekend came to an end. In six months Coltness Car Club had created a kind of Goodwood Revival of rallying in a Scottish forest. This was only ever intended to be a one-off celebration of Colin McRae's life, but is there any chance we are witnessing the start of one of the great events in the motoring calendar?