The History of the World Rally Championship: 1993

And so the old order changes. Lancia, who by this time had won half of the 20 World Rally Championships for Manufacturers held, not only lost the championship but failed to win a rally.

But this wasn't the main story of the year.


Nor was it the wave of new rally cars arriving on the scene with Subaru, Mitsubishi and Ford ditching their oversized Legacies, Galants and Sierras in favour of nimbler Imprezas, Lancers and Escorts - the latter being the nearest thing Group A produced to a homologation special.


Nor was it Auriel's last night heroics on the Monte to deny the Escort Cosworth a win on its debut, nor how Juha Kankkunen won his twentieth rally and fourth World Title, or how Francois Cunico emerged from 15 years as an underdog to win the Sanremo rally or how rally got its first Japanese champion manufacturer or that Lombard ceased to sponsor the RAC rally leading to a name change for Britain's round (although this was pretty earth shattering stuff that I'm still getting use to).

No, as a British rally fan the news of the year was how Colin McRae won his first World Rally, at a stroke doubling Britain's haul of world wins.

We'd been one of rallying's top nations in so many ways, yet old Roger Albert Clark had been our only top level winner for seventeen years. As three of the top four teams in rallying were based in England and the RAC (sorry, Network Q) Rally was regularly vying with the Monte Carlo to be the most popular of the year, this just didn't seem right.

Colin didn't exactly walk the event; he inherited the lead when Sainz had engine trouble and Vatanen hit a rock, but his blast from 4th to 1st on the 44km Motu stage, the longest of the rally, was legendary stuff. He eventually came home 27 seconds of Francois Delecour, with three World Champions trailing in his wake.

As for the championship itself, Toyota and Lancia had swapped drivers in the closed season. Sainz and Aurial had bad luck all year leaving Kankkunen to lead the battle against Delecour in the Ford Escort Cosworth. Delecour hadn't exactly come from nowhere. He'd been on his way for years and Auriel had originally been called 'the next Delecour'. However it wasn't until Ford gave him the keys to the new Escort that he really started to fly.

Kankkunen and Delecour swapped wins and positions in the championship all year until a crash in Sanremo left the door open for Kankkunen to seal the Drivers and Manufacturers Championships for himself and Toyota with third on the tarmac of Catalunya. In a year of firsts, this was the first crown for a Japanese team.

With Drivers and Manufacturers titles already decided, the teams came to Britain racing for pride only. Now he's broken his duck, surely this was going to be McRae's year?

Once again his Subaru led the field as the rally into Wales, but once again it all went wrong. He was heading Kankkunen comfortably when the smell of anti-freeze told him something was amiss up front. The radiator was holed and the car struggled on for one more stage before finally expiring.

Kankkunen inherited the lead and won his twentieth rally, equalling Markku Alen's record. Sportingly he reminded a gutted McRae that it had taken him eleven years before he'd won his home rally.

Top Brit turned out to be Malcolm Wilson in his Escort Cosworth, his best result in seventeen years of trying. With Vatanen coming fifth the average age of the top six was 35 - further evidence that in Britain's treacherous forests the experience of age usually beats the speed of youth.

But even if there were still familiar faces behind the wheel, there was plenty of new technology under the bonnet. In 1993 we had Subaru pioneering semi-automatic gearboxes, Toyota trying our traction control and also the first 'bang-bang' devices - much to the delight of spectators.

With both Sanremo and Catalunya now all-tarmac, the WRC was now much more balanced between different surfaces, although it now didn't matter so much as by the end of the season all the top teams had four wheel drive cars with viscous coupling central differentials.

Rallying was certainly on a roll. The Lancia-Toyota battles had been fun, but now was had a four way fight between Toyota, Ford, Subaru and Mitsibishi things looked like they were goig to get even more exciting. Which one would end up on top twelve months hence was anyone's guess.