Full Throttle

NASCAR in recent years has steadily grown and has attracted personalities that, in the past, you wouldn’t associate with stock car racing

In the early eighties Jack Roush split off from his drag racing roots to start a team that now dominates NASCAR. Joe Gibbs left behind two NFL Super Bowl Championships (He has since returned to do both sports) to enter NASCAR. The Busch Series has seen a couple former NBA stars form partnerships in that series.

The lure of NASCAR has apparently attracted former FIA World Rally Champion Colin McRae to have a “look see” down South.

Scotland’s former world rally champion Colin McRae is considering a move to America’s Nascar series.

McRae visited a Nascar event recently, and sampled stock car competition in 2002 at the UK’s Rockingham circuit. He told the BBC’s Top Gear magazine: “If I go and do it, I want to go and commit to it. I think you’ve got to look at least a couple of years’ plan.”

“I could go and do a couple of Nascar tests or a couple of races, but then that would be deciding time.”

The Scotsman, who won the 1995 World Rally crown took part in his second Dakar Rally earlier this year, crashing out on the sixth stage. In December, he took part against the likes of F1 champion Michael Schumacher in the Race of Champions at the Stade de France in Paris.

McRae quit the WRC in 2003 after losing his drive with Citroen. He rejected an offer from Skoda to return in this year’s championship.

If he decides to go the NASCAR route, and gets into a competitve ride, I predict he will be very competitive in a very short time, for a very simple reason. Precise car control.

Many of the current NASCAR stars started on the dirt bull rings of America where car control is at a premium. A 6 inch slip while “riding the cushion” gives you an very real opportunity for a cartwheeling, end over end ride that hopefully ends inside the track and not over the fence.

Now consider the life of a WRC jockey. He must possess the same car control skills, on similar 90 or 180 degree corners, but in most cases he does it at 100mph on snow, ice, gravel or rain soaked mud. And the corner being negotiated at that speed has no outer catch fence, is only 30 feet wide and one slip sends you and your $100,000 machine down a 1000 foot mountain cliff!

I hope the NASCAR magnet does attract McRae, it would be very entertaining to watch him showcase his skills in another venue.