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ON TO LE MANS.(Automobile racing.)(Interview)
Byline: Mike Duff
Fresh off a good drive in Dakar, rally ace Colin McRae looks for another challenge BY MIKE DUFF
Colin McRae looks unfamiliar as he sits by the swimming pool of a five-star Senegal hotel, just hours after finishing his first Dakar rally. And it is not just his lobster-pink suntan or his new Nissan-branded clothing. It takes awhile to realize the difference is nothing more than that he is smiling; not something that happened too frequently during his last few seasons in the WRC.
First question: What did the Scotsman think of his first taste of the Dakar's 7000-mile course through the deserts of northwest Africa?
"Yeah, I liked it. But I'd prepared mentally for it and it would have to be a complete disaster for me not to have enjoyed it. You've got to accept that there is going to be a lot of monotony, a lot of ups and downs. It's a sort of love-hate relationship, depending on how it goes.''
The high points for the former World Rally champion included two outright stage wins and a strong, top-three position during the first few days. The lows came with reliability problems for his Nissan truck, dropping him almost a full 24 hours on winner Stephane Peterhansel's Mitsubishi into a 20th-place finish.
"The goal was to finish the rally and have a good result,'' McRae explains. "Once the good-result possibility was gone, I still had the other goal, which was still pretty tough, to get to Dakar.''
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Source: HighBeam Research, ON TO LE MANS.(Automobile racing.)(Interview)