Thrills of the '90s: World Rallying's golden era

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Just when you thought it couldn’t get better than Group B, the World Rally Championship ascended to perhaps its highest point across the 1990s, with hero drivers, epic battles and technical shifts that redefined the sport.

Lancia, Toyota, Subaru, Ford, Mitsubishi… McRae, Sainz, Auriol, Mäkinen, Kankkunen, Grönholm, Allen… the names just keep coming as some of the best to ever do it took centre stage.

These are 10 memorable moments from a mesmerising decade on the stages, which has now been recreated by Scalextric in its latest Rally Championship Retro Race Set featuring two iconic cars from the era: Colin McRae’s Impreza WRX and Didier Auriol’s Celica GT-Four.

1990, Lancia passes the torch

Group B may have been world rallying’s power-hungry zenith, but the following Group A regulations were the rules that pulled the sport back from the brink. Yes, the fire-breathing, flame-spitting monsters were gone, but sport, and arguably more accessible competition, lived on.

Lancia’s Delta may have been out-gunned in the Group B wars, but once the rules shifted toward production-based Group A machinery, the two-litre front-drive Delta was perfectly placed. Three straight drivers’ and constructors’ titles followed for Juha Kankkunen and Miki Biasion before the turn of the decade brought renewed rivalry with Toyota.

The Celica GT-Four ST165 made its WRC debut in 1988, won its first event a year later, and in 1990 Carlos Sainz won four times to secure the Japanese brand’s first WRC drivers’ title. Lancia still took the makes’ crown, with Kankkunen adding one final drivers’ title in 1991 before the Delta’s days became firmly numbered.

1992-1994 Toyota’s historic treble

As Lancia faded, Toyota excelled, with its new Celica GT-Four ST185 smashing records to become the first machine to claim three straight WRC drivers’ titles. The fact that all three were secured by drivers with differing styles – Sainz, Kankkunen and Didier Auriol – speaks volumes about the versatility of the ST185.

Arriving in 1992, the ST185 rectified many of the problems that hampered the original ST165, such as heavy suspension and heating issues. The result was a near-bulletproof four-wheel-drive rocket that would go on to secure 16 wins en route to its trio of titles from ’92-94.

Perhaps its most notable successes came on the gruelling Safari Rally. Not only did the ST185 score its breakthrough win on the longest, most punishing event on the calendar (featuring more than five times the mileage of a typical WRC event), but it also went unbeaten there from 1992-1996 when Toyota was serving its penalty-enforced sabbatical.

1993, McRae breaks through

While Toyota was busy cleaning up, a new star was on the rise. Sweden 1992 was probably when Colin McRae first announced his arrival on the world stage.

By then already a two-time British Rally champion, the Scottish star claimed second place in a Subaru Legacy RS, and in doing so earned himself a promotion for the following season.

It took just five outings for the milestone result to arrive, with a controlled drive at Rally New Zealand netting five stage wins and a first overall victory, 27 seconds clear of François Delecour’s Ford Escort Cosworth. Fifth in the championship was the limit that season, but it paved the way for what came two years later…

1994, Auriol pre-dates the Sébastiens

France now boasts more World Rally Championship titles than any other nation, almost exclusively thanks to Loeb and Ogier. The key word there is ‘almost’, as Didier Auriol provided the country’s breakthrough a full decade before Loeb.

Having been part of the WRC since 1984 and risen through the ranks to land factory drives with Ford, Lancia and Toyota – winning for each along the way – Auriol was starting to get the whiff of ‘nearly man’, having finished third in the world championship every year from 1991-’93. This included a heartbreaking final-rally loss to Carlos Sainz in 1992 when his Lancia’s engine gave up in a Kielder forest having carried him to six wins that year.

Beaching on a remote snowbank from the lead of the ’94 Monte Carlo season-opener was a bad start, but wins at home in France, Argentina and Italy put him on the brink of history. All he had to do was survive the RAC.

That proved easier said than done as an off on day one was compounded by a roll and a blown turbo on day two. It could’ve been another year gone, but a retirement for rival Sainz opened the way to charge back to a title-winning sixth.

1995, Toyota’s expulsion

While the first half of the decade proved rosy for Toyota, the Japanese giant’s second half fell apart after one key moment in post-event scrutineering in Barcelona. Juha Kankkunen had just finished fourth to maintain his title hopes when an FIA scrutineer peered into his Celica GT-Four’s engine bay, measured, raised an eyebrow, measured again… then promptly filed three counts of illegality against its air restrictor.

In an attempt to claw back power lost to new turbo intake rules, Toyota Team Europe’s engineers had devised a fiendishly clever spring-loaded system to manipulate the mandatory restrictor plate. Under boost pressure, springs could alter the position of the plate, opening an additional 5mm gap for extra air to pass into the engine. When the engine returned to idle, the plate would relocate to its original, and legal, position. All of this was encased within neat hosing, away from prying eyes.

Then FIA president Max Mosley delivered Toyota a 12-month ban – its drivers also stripped of their championship points – at an extraordinary World Motor Sport Council meeting on November 3.

However, while doing so he also paid the engineers perhaps the ultimate underhand compliment by stating the design was “the most sophisticated and ingenious device I have seen in 30 years of motor sport, or indeed had any other members of the World Council, scrutineers or technical experts.” Badge of (dis)honour anyone?

1995, McRae makes history

Auriol’s 1994 RAC scare came in contrast to McRae’s dream as he swept to a dominant first victory at home, becoming the first homegrown winner of Britain’s biggest rally since Roger Clark 18 years previous, the success also coming on the event’s 50th anniversary running. Many celebrating fans wondered if it could get better than this, and it did as the following year’s victory party came with a world championship.

McRae had been in the ascendancy across 1995, with a second win in New Zealand allied to a level-headed drive to second in Australia and a decidedly reckless run to second in Spain after ignoring team orders to hold station and earning a rollocking from Subaru team boss David Richards that carried the threat of an instant sacking.

Level on points with team-mate Carlos Sainz heading to the finale on home ground, McRae was determined not to be beaten, storming to 18 stage wins to put Sainz in the shade and cement his place in history. At 27, McRae became the youngest-ever World Rally champion – a record that stood until 2022 – and Britain’s first.

1998, Burns on Safari

It had taken 44 years, but British Safari Rally wins proved somewhat like buses as Richard Burns doubled up on Colin McRae’s milestone win in 1997 with Subaru by taking his own triumph with Mitsubishi a year later.

McRae made even more history with his result, becoming the first Briton to win the endurance epic since its inauguration in 1953, but this nod goes to Burns by dint of this also being his breakthrough WRC victory. And what an event to do it on – 2,339km (1,063km of it competitive) of unforgiving terrain.

Burns had made his WRC debut back in 1990 before a stint with Subaru brought his first podium finish on the RAC Rally in 1995, easing his passage into a works Mitsubishi seat the following year.

He’d followed McRae home, seven minutes in arrears, in 1997’s Safari, but made no mistake this time around, winning the opening stage and then outlasting both McRae (boiled engine oil) and his Lancer team-mate Tommi Mäkinen (snapped cambelt) to pull clear of Juha Kankkunen’s Ford by over nine minutes to secure the first of his 10 career WRC triumphs.

1998, Record Rally Portugal thriller

After an opening run of the Monte, Sweden and Safari, the WRC’s return to a more typical event in Portugal seemed the chance for a breather. Instead, it proved one of the most breathless.

Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz – competing in his 100th top-flight rally – played out what was at the time the closest-ever WRC finish in stunning fashion. Both drivers threaded the needle expertly through the tight and spectator-lined gravel stages – we dare you not to clench at the onboards! – before a mesmerising final-stage shootout.

In many ways it proved a rally of attrition: Mäkinen lost his shot at victory after clouting a tree in his Mitsubishi, Kankkunen’s Ford had to limp on in 2WD form after a front differential problem, Sainz struggled for feel in his Toyota for the first half amid brake issues, while McRae’s Subaru had to recover from a puncture and carried a persistent engine problem that sapped power.

It all boiled down to McRae holding a seven-second lead over Sainz heading into the final 11km blast, but with all the momentum in Toyota’s corner after Sainz had won three of the previous five stages without reply from McRae, who said prior to the final run: “It doesn’t look like we can hold him [Sainz] off. He’s flying on this surface and there doesn’t seem much we can do.”

Amid an electric atmosphere, McRae ran first and then had to sit and watch as Sainz chased him down. Toyota’s reports suggested the Spaniard had clawed back over four seconds of the lead by half distance. His final time of 8m27.3sec proved a winning time, but only for the stage as he fell 2.1sec shy of McRae’s total in what would stand as the closest WRC finish until both the 2007 Rally New Zealand (0.3sec) and 2011 Rally Jordan (0.2sec) surpassed it.

1998, Moya’s smashing time

Portugal wasn’t Sainz’s only near-miss during 1998, with the final stage of Rally GB proving by far the most heartbreaking. Sainz had been locked in a to-and-fro title battle with Mäkinen, the Spaniard’s consistency and two wins versus Mäkinen’s ‘win or bin’ style – his five victories matched by the same number of DNFs.

The momentum looked to have swung Sainz’s way when Mäkinen smacked a concrete block at Millbrook, terminally damaging the right-rear wheel. He attempted to limp on to service but was promptly halted by police during the road section on his way there.

That left Sainz only needing fourth place to seal what would have been a third world championship. The Corolla began the final 27km Margam stage in exactly that and was cruising to the crown before flames began to lick beneath the engine bay. Sainz coasted to a halt just 500 metres from the finish, his championship up in smoke.

As the Ford Escort of Bruno Thiry passed, it all got too much for co-driver Luis Moya, who hurled his crash helmet through the Toyota’s rear window in frustration.

Reporters waiting at the finish expecting a jubilant Sainz quizzed the bemused Thiry instead, creating one of the WRC’s most memorable interviews as the Belgian squawked: “He [Sainz is] here!.. 300 metre… engine… the bonnet is open… unbelievable! You can run to [him]!”

Sainz was less effusive, finishing his year with simple words into a roving microphone: “Engine blew… 500 metres to the end. No warning. No way. Not so lucky, but that’s life…”

1999, Mäkinen makes his mark

Tommi Mäkinen was already in the history books after becoming the first driver to win three consecutive WRC titles between 1996-1998. Surely a fourth would be a step too far?

A late bloomer of sorts, Mäkinen only had a sole WRC victory to his name before joining Mitsubishi’s works squad for 1996. He added five more to canter to a first title, before edging McRae by a single point to double up in ’97. Sainz’s aforementioned late drama in 1998 somehow meant a third crown wound up in Mäkinen’s lap, and secured the Manufacturers’ title for Mitsubishi for the first time.

However, the end of the decade brought renewed competition and the biggest manufacturer field yet, with both Škoda and Peugeot arriving as the new World Rally Car regulations – which ditched the requirement for brands to create a set number of homologation specials and instead allowed them to base WR cars off a production model – truly took off. Add to this the rise of two-wheel-drive ‘kit-car’ Tarmac specials such as the Citroën Xsara and you had one of the most open seasons yet, with six different crews from five different brands celebrating wins.

Mäkinen got off to a flying start with victories at both the Monte and Sweden, but disqualification from second at the Safari for outside assistance changing a tyre reined the Finn in. McRae had made a high-profile move to Ford and beat a broken thumb to win in Kenya and Portugal before teething problems with the new Focus WRC led to a crushing string of retirements.

After the anomalies of Philippe Bugalski’s Tarmac wins in Spain and France in the Xsara – which would prompt a rule change for 2000 to nerf the potent formula – Mäkinen was left in a tight scrap with Subaru’s Richard Burns and Didier Auriol’s Toyota. Auriol kept the duel interesting until he hit a tree and retired from the penultimate round in Australia, leaving Mäkinen to secure a historic fourth crown with a round to spare. Good thing too, as engine failure spoiled the Mitsubishi party on Rally GB’s finale, leaving Burns to sweep to a popular home win and leapfrog Auriol into second.

Mäkinen, meanwhile, ended the decade with 19 WRC wins, all but the first with Mitsubishi in what proved one of the most potent pairings in WRC history.