Part 1: It’s just a stage
The year is 1998, and I am 11 years old. In my bedroom in Hampshire, England, I stare intently at a vast beige computer monitor, mesmerised. A pixelated, but beautifully curved backside dances around on the screen. It’s the Subaru Impreza S4 Rally.
I grip my Logitech Steering Wheel with sweaty palms and tussle with this grunting blue beast. We are charging across the gravel tracks of New Zealand, crashing through muddy fields, over crests and into trees. I’m playing Codemasters’ Magnum Opus: Colin McRae Rally and it’s the best thing ever. 1998 was the year rally barrelled off the road and smashed into my consciousness.
The era of rally that accompanied my adolescence (‘95–’03) helped cement the sport in my imagination. It was a time of homegrown success with Colin McRae and Richard Burns, and exciting, hard fought campaigns. With the exception of Marcus Grönholm in 2002, each of the 1997–2003 seasons were won by an average margin of only three points. The 2001 season finale treated us to a four-way clash, seeing Burns claw his way to the Championship.
The conclusion of the 1998 season has to rank amongst the closest and most heartbreaking moments in all motorsport. (It also happens to be the year in which Colin McRae Rally is set.) Carlos Sainz was all set to take his third title after a six year gap, just needing to finish the rally to claim it. With 500 metres to go of the final stage of the final event of the season, his Toyota Corolla WRC broke down. It was over. Mitsubishi’s Flying Finn Tommi Mäkinen, who had been vying with Sainz for the title, had already left for the hotel after an accident seemingly wrecked his chances earlier in the event. His brother phoned during an interview to let him know that he was the 1998 champion.
This was also an era where the drivers looked and acted like regular blokes. The aforementioned Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Carlos Sainz could easily pass for a group of North Sea trawlermen. They had personalities, cracked jokes and lost their tempers. These men were not the gilded boy-princes of F1. They seemed like normal blokes with extraordinary talent and focus. And so rally seemed tangible, almost within my grasp.
But as I grew older, other things with beautiful curves (namely guitars and girls) became more important to me. I moved to the eternal traffic jam of central London for university, which felt as far away from a rally stage as you could get. After graduation in 2008 I spent many years skint and struggling to find a career, and myself. This period of my life coincided with a number of downturns for the sport. Icy Frenchman Sebastien Loeb’s near-decade-long dominance from 2004 drained some of the joy from the sport. TV coverage retreated from prime-time to backwater satellite channels and the 2008 GFC culled the field of teams, essentially leaving only Ford and Citroen to duke it out.
Rally and I just drifted apart, so much so that I almost forgot about it.
20 years after those golden days playing Colin McRae Rally I have only one regret in life: that I never pulled at that thread. Until now...
It feels like factors have been coalescing in recent years. I moved to Auckland, New Zealand in 2015 and often find myself driving on the very same unsealed roads I galavanted around on my PC 20 years ago. There are heaps of Subaru everywhere. There’s an outdoorsy, sporty attitude in the air, a feeling you can have a go at anything you fancy. Long-dormant tectonic plates began shifting in my subconscious. All it would take was a tremor to set the whole thing off...
Late last year that quake happened. Through sheer YouTube serendipity I found myself watching the brilliant Partridgesque 1998 WRC Season Review on YouTube. It was an instant surge of nostalgia. Over the following weeks I hungrily consumed as many WRC Season Reviews as I could find. I had the overwhelming urge to play a rally game again. I wondered what my old pals Codemasters had been up to since 1998. The answer: self-flagillator’s paradise Dirt Rally.
This game is one mean mother. It’s a pure rally game, a bare-bones simulator with few of the pleasantries of a regular video game. The learning curve is brutal – literally finishing a stage without crashing is a major achievement that takes serious dedication. The difficulty settings for your opponents starts at ‘very hard’ through to ‘bow down before me for I am thy new God’. There’s no rewinding time when you make a mistake – and you will make mistakes, many, many mistakes. Lucky enough to slip off the track and not get wrapped around a tree? Here’s a stage-ruining 15 second penalty for you.
Dirt Rally is a cruel mistress, but it keeps you coming back for more. You have to be smart and actively learn technique – you truly earn every millisecond gained. When you finally pull off the perfect Scandinavian Flick, you feel like a hero. I played nearly every day for months.
After a while I hit a mental wall. I felt like I had gotten as good as I was going to get. I was disheartened that I was still a country mile behind most online players. Maybe I just wasn’t very good? Christmas came around and I had a digital detox for few weeks in Bali, though I couldn’t keep rally far from my thoughts. When I got back I fired up the old Xbox One for a quick stage. Out of the blue I pulled out a decent stage time, then another, and another. Yes I was still stacking it on a regular basis, but my brain finally ‘got it’. It felt like I was actually in control of the car, rather than just clinging on for dear life. I was now beating times I declared impossible to better a month earlier by 20+ seconds.
I reasoned, to be good at Dirt Rally – a rally simulator – you need to understand the fundamentals of how to drive a rally car in the real world. And I was starting to get good (relatively speaking). A switch had flipped. I knew I finally had to listen to my inner 11-year-old and try rally for real. This was it. I made a resolution at the start of 2019 that in some way, in some form, I was finally going to rally on real dirt in a real car.
I know it’s probably going to be a journey lasting years. There’s heaps to learn about the sport, techniques and mechanics – and I’ll need to save up a load of honk to make it happen. I know I’m not going to end up driving in the WRC, but I truly feel determined to go as far as I’m willing and able (even if that’s just pottering around a field in a ‘92 Corolla.)
Join me over the coming months and years as I embark upon my very own Rally Quest!
I grip my Logitech Steering Wheel with sweaty palms and tussle with this grunting blue beast. We are charging across the gravel tracks of New Zealand, crashing through muddy fields, over crests and into trees. I’m playing Codemasters’ Magnum Opus: Colin McRae Rally and it’s the best thing ever. 1998 was the year rally barrelled off the road and smashed into my consciousness.
The era of rally that accompanied my adolescence (‘95–’03) helped cement the sport in my imagination. It was a time of homegrown success with Colin McRae and Richard Burns, and exciting, hard fought campaigns. With the exception of Marcus Grönholm in 2002, each of the 1997–2003 seasons were won by an average margin of only three points. The 2001 season finale treated us to a four-way clash, seeing Burns claw his way to the Championship.
The conclusion of the 1998 season has to rank amongst the closest and most heartbreaking moments in all motorsport. (It also happens to be the year in which Colin McRae Rally is set.) Carlos Sainz was all set to take his third title after a six year gap, just needing to finish the rally to claim it. With 500 metres to go of the final stage of the final event of the season, his Toyota Corolla WRC broke down. It was over. Mitsubishi’s Flying Finn Tommi Mäkinen, who had been vying with Sainz for the title, had already left for the hotel after an accident seemingly wrecked his chances earlier in the event. His brother phoned during an interview to let him know that he was the 1998 champion.
This was also an era where the drivers looked and acted like regular blokes. The aforementioned Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Carlos Sainz could easily pass for a group of North Sea trawlermen. They had personalities, cracked jokes and lost their tempers. These men were not the gilded boy-princes of F1. They seemed like normal blokes with extraordinary talent and focus. And so rally seemed tangible, almost within my grasp.
But as I grew older, other things with beautiful curves (namely guitars and girls) became more important to me. I moved to the eternal traffic jam of central London for university, which felt as far away from a rally stage as you could get. After graduation in 2008 I spent many years skint and struggling to find a career, and myself. This period of my life coincided with a number of downturns for the sport. Icy Frenchman Sebastien Loeb’s near-decade-long dominance from 2004 drained some of the joy from the sport. TV coverage retreated from prime-time to backwater satellite channels and the 2008 GFC culled the field of teams, essentially leaving only Ford and Citroen to duke it out.
Rally and I just drifted apart, so much so that I almost forgot about it.
20 years after those golden days playing Colin McRae Rally I have only one regret in life: that I never pulled at that thread. Until now...
It feels like factors have been coalescing in recent years. I moved to Auckland, New Zealand in 2015 and often find myself driving on the very same unsealed roads I galavanted around on my PC 20 years ago. There are heaps of Subaru everywhere. There’s an outdoorsy, sporty attitude in the air, a feeling you can have a go at anything you fancy. Long-dormant tectonic plates began shifting in my subconscious. All it would take was a tremor to set the whole thing off...
Late last year that quake happened. Through sheer YouTube serendipity I found myself watching the brilliant Partridgesque 1998 WRC Season Review on YouTube. It was an instant surge of nostalgia. Over the following weeks I hungrily consumed as many WRC Season Reviews as I could find. I had the overwhelming urge to play a rally game again. I wondered what my old pals Codemasters had been up to since 1998. The answer: self-flagillator’s paradise Dirt Rally.
This game is one mean mother. It’s a pure rally game, a bare-bones simulator with few of the pleasantries of a regular video game. The learning curve is brutal – literally finishing a stage without crashing is a major achievement that takes serious dedication. The difficulty settings for your opponents starts at ‘very hard’ through to ‘bow down before me for I am thy new God’. There’s no rewinding time when you make a mistake – and you will make mistakes, many, many mistakes. Lucky enough to slip off the track and not get wrapped around a tree? Here’s a stage-ruining 15 second penalty for you.
Dirt Rally is a cruel mistress, but it keeps you coming back for more. You have to be smart and actively learn technique – you truly earn every millisecond gained. When you finally pull off the perfect Scandinavian Flick, you feel like a hero. I played nearly every day for months.
After a while I hit a mental wall. I felt like I had gotten as good as I was going to get. I was disheartened that I was still a country mile behind most online players. Maybe I just wasn’t very good? Christmas came around and I had a digital detox for few weeks in Bali, though I couldn’t keep rally far from my thoughts. When I got back I fired up the old Xbox One for a quick stage. Out of the blue I pulled out a decent stage time, then another, and another. Yes I was still stacking it on a regular basis, but my brain finally ‘got it’. It felt like I was actually in control of the car, rather than just clinging on for dear life. I was now beating times I declared impossible to better a month earlier by 20+ seconds.
I reasoned, to be good at Dirt Rally – a rally simulator – you need to understand the fundamentals of how to drive a rally car in the real world. And I was starting to get good (relatively speaking). A switch had flipped. I knew I finally had to listen to my inner 11-year-old and try rally for real. This was it. I made a resolution at the start of 2019 that in some way, in some form, I was finally going to rally on real dirt in a real car.
I know it’s probably going to be a journey lasting years. There’s heaps to learn about the sport, techniques and mechanics – and I’ll need to save up a load of honk to make it happen. I know I’m not going to end up driving in the WRC, but I truly feel determined to go as far as I’m willing and able (even if that’s just pottering around a field in a ‘92 Corolla.)
Join me over the coming months and years as I embark upon my very own Rally Quest!
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