The History of the World Rally Championship: 1994

It was hard to know who was happiest man in Chester when the Network Q Rally finished off the 1994 World Rally Championship: the young man on the bonnet of his car spraying the champagne or the chap who'd struggled home in sixth.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The year had started with the Monte Carlo as usual, never a lucky event for British teams. From 1966, when the French excluded the first four cars, to 1979 when spectators stopped Ford from winning by placing rocks on the road, to 1993 when the Escort Cosworth's debut win was stolen by Auriel's last night blast, it always seemed to go wrong at the eleventh hour.


However in 1994 we finally made it and Francois Delecour gave Ford a win on the most famous rally in the world. Other British crews though weren't so lucky.

The four Minis specially homologated by Rover (or whatever they were called that year) to commemorate the little car's first win on the event all failed to finish - Timo Makinen's version even failing to start as it was stolen before the rally began.

Somewhat worse was what happened to Colin McRae. The French spectators had been as badly behaved as ever, causing scares for plenty of drivers, and on the Burzet stage they shovelled snow onto the road causing the Scotsman to crash.

But Delecour had no such problems. Was this going to be Frenchman's year? It could have been. After the Monte he was leading in Portugal before the gremlins struck. Then in April he decided to take a friends Ferrari F40 for a spin. Unfortunately he met a local rally driver coming the other way in the ensuing accident a very expensive Italian car was written off and an even more valuable pair of French feet suffered injuries that would keep their owner out of rallying for the rest of the year.


With their main driver hors de combat Ford then became a support act to the battle between Toyota and Subaru. Toyota had Kankkanen and Auriel, whilst Subaru had Sainz and McRae.

The Scotsman had a difficult year, following his Monte troubles by going up in flames in Portugal, crashing in Corsica and Argentina and being excluded in bizarre circumstances in Greece after leading for half the rally. The latter was the sort of thing that only ever happened to McRae. First scrutineers had failed to shut his bonnet properly, leading to it flying up and smashing the windscreen. He'd been allowed to change it without dropping down the field by friendly organisers, only to later be accused of holding up other competitors and disqualified.


However in New Zealand again it all went right for Colin. True, he inherited the lead when team mate Sainz's engine went bang, but after that he wiped the floor with the opposition. Once again, on the longest stage of the rally he was in a league of his own and took 30 seconds out of Kankkunen. The four times world champion, two minutes down by the end of the rally, was stunned at the following press conference when McRae said he's never had to drive very hard.

McRae wasn't the only young driver wining. Ford's B Team scored a win on the 100o Lakes thanks to Tommi Makinen, a young lad we'd be seeing a lot more of. Apart from that though the winning was done by old trio of Auriel, Kankkanen and Sainz.

Auriel and Kankkanen had the Manufacturers Championship wrapped up for Toyota after the 1000 Lakes, but as the crews went into the Network Q Rally all three still had a chance of the Driver's title.

Auriel had an eleven point lead but almost immediately things started to go wrong. He lost four minutes when he hit a rock and then ten minutes when he rolled - and that was just the first day. He then lost another four minutes when the turbo failed. He continued, but in 94th place.

Subaru meanwhile had McRae in front and Sainz in second. McRae was easily the fastest driver in the rally and had had an untypically trouble free event, but he knew that team orders could see the win given to Sainz so he could secure the world title.

Then Sainz sailed off the road in Dovey. It was a result that pleased everyone except him. The British fans saw the first home winner since 1976, but they also saw Didier Auriel, who'd fought back to sixth, crowned World Champion. It was a great result for them both, drivers who'd promised more over the last few years but who had both been dogged by bad luck.

So Auriel and Toyota were crowned, but there was a third championship up for grabs. This was the second ever Formula 2 championship for manufacturers of normally aspirated, up to 2 litre, two wheel drive cars, and to everyone's surprise it went to Skoda. Perhaps this is less of a shock today, but then the the Czech's top model was the 1.3 Favourate. However reliability and consistency, as well as some seriously hard peddling by the drivers, brought them the title.

This was good news for people like me who found themselves driving a World Championship winning rally car to work, but rather bad news for the series. The likes of Opel and VW were quite prepared to spend serious money trying to beat each other, but weren't so keen to spend real cash trying to beat Skoda, especially as they might not be able to.

But back to the main event. Sainz and Kankkanen had been passing the World Championship back and forth between themselves for the last four years. Now their monopoly was broken, who would take the laurels next year?