Toyota's disgrace had seemingly left the door wide open for Subaru to clean up. Sainz had left the team to drive for the Ford, who had shown no sign of making the Escort Cosworth into anything other than an occasional rally winner.
But it wasn't to be. Instead, there was a new kid on the block.
Subaru did win the manufacturers title, but this was now very much a consolation prize. The main event was the Drivers title.Nobody noticed much when Tommi Makinen won the Swedish. He was Scandinavian after all they liked the snow. But when he managed to bring his Mitsubishi home first on the notoriously tricky Safari the rally world took note.
He looked set to do it again on the inaugural Rally Indonesia until his engine let go. This let McRae into the lead, but he left the road permanently and handed victory to Sainz and Ford.
McRae got his revenge in Greece when he nosed ahead of the Lancer and in Finland Kankkunen gave him a run for his money, but for the rest of the season Makinen out pace Sainz and stayed on the road unlike McRae and wrapped up the championship in Australia.
McRae then showed he was just as good on the black stuff as in the dirt to win the last two tarmac rounds and give Subaru their championship, but it was Makinen's year. Run by British endurance rally specialist Andrew Cowan, the Ralliart team was a modest enterprise compared with some and so this was their triumph too.Finns had been winning rallies since long before the WRC was invented, but Makinen was a new breed of Flying Finn. Mikkola, Alen, Kankkunen and the rest were fast, but they also had a reputation for consistency that southern Europeans lacked. Makinen, like McRae was the type of driver who could turn it up to eleven when it counted. Like McRae he broke cars and crashed, but in the new, shorter, WRC it was speed that counted above consistency.
And this WRC was shorter than in the past. Just nine rounds and, thanks to the FIAs rotation system, there was no Monte Carlo no Rally of Great Britain. Both events still ran and, thanks to being free of the rules about repeated stages and centralised servicing, they were free to revert to their old format.
For the Network Q that meant an escape from South Wales and a return to the northern stages and killer Kielder. To add to the interest the weather turned nasty and covered the tracks with ice and snow. For rally fans though it was just like old times, shivering in the frozen forests.
Ice made the results a bit random. Early leader Kankkunen disappeared of the road on a patch of ice, the infamous Chatsworth tree stump claimed two victims and Pundershaw was littered with upturned Renault Meganes. Armin Schwartz won in his Toyota Celica - a car banned from the WRC because of TTE's cheating last year - but the drive of the rally came from Swedish ice man Stig Blomqvist who managed third in his little Skoda Felicia 1.6.
The ex-World Champion had been enjoying helping the Czechs develop their second generation front wheel drive cars, and the wintry conditions allowed him to show off his left foot braking skills and show a clean pair of heals to the rest of the two wheel drive field - and a number of four wheel drive competitors too.It may not have been a WRC event, but it was great fun. Veteran British club driver Vince Wetton said he'd not had so much fun since the cat died, and most fans knew exactly what he meant.
It turned out this was the last of the old 'RAC' rallies. Next year it was back to South Wales, where the Rally of Great Britain is still stuck.
It was also the end of Group A. Brought in in haste after the termination of Group B, the format had at first disappointed, but then thrilled. Nobody could doubt that the Lancers, Imprezas, Cosworths and the rest were real rally cars. Next year it would be World Rally Cars.
1996 FIA World Rally Championship for Manufacturers Results
1996 FIA World Rally Championship for Drivers Results
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