Colin McRae at Play

Colin McRae loves bikes. Plain and simple. When he's not doing three figure silly speeds on tarmac, sand, gravel or even snow and ice, he can normally be found having fun on two wheels. It's reassuring for all bikers to know that one of the world's best car drivers is one of us, someone who gets his serious enjoyment from riding a motorcycle.

"At the end of the day, driving the Ford Focus WRC car is fun," says Colin, "but a lot of the enjoyment only comes from the results. If you win, you're over the moon, if you don't you're not. The simple fact is that driving the car is my job and in my spare time I get a massive kick out of riding bikes." And when your 9 to 5 job is such an adrenaline rush anyway, your average road iron is not going to be up to the job of getting the McRae adrenal glands pumping. Hence this machine. It's an exact copy of John Crawford's ETI Suzuki GSX-R1000 machine which he's been racing in British Superbikes this season.

"It all snowballed a bit, to be honest," admits McRae, 1995 World Rally Champ who is currently lying second in this year's series. "I've got a standard GSX-R1000 and I was going to just get a few choice modifications done. I've known Ian Simpson, ex-British Superbike Champion and now ETI Suzuki team-manager, for a while and we had a talk about what we should do with the bike and by the time we'd stopped talking, the whole thing had become a full-blown superbike!" With British Superbike rules going to 1,000cc, it would be easier to build a superbike-spec machine for Colin, as current regulations allow for Supersports-style tuning, rather than the anything-goes Superbike regs which the 750 fours run to.

Cheaper to build, too, by about £50,000. This is important when you're a Scotsman and you're paying, even if you're rumoured to be the highest paid rally driver in the World with a £5-6 million pay packet from Ford every year! Simpson takes up the story. "Colin had helped us out a bit during the early part of the year, by letting us use his street GSX-R1000 as a donor bike for the frame and engine when we were starting out and waiting for parts. By the time we were up and running and we began building his bike we decided to base it on our machine. Our bikes are pretty trick and we know what works and what doesn't work on them by now, so it was going to be easy to build something that would work really well."

So what goes into the McRae missile? As it was to be a faithful reproduction copy of John Crawford's bike,
first the engine was worked on. Colin's bike got a full compliment of Yoshimura internals including gearbox and cams along with uprated ignition and fuel-injection. Breathing was improved with a modified airbox and a Promotive full exhaust system was also put on, replacing the more restrictive and heavier standard exhaust. Nikki Kennedy then tuned the engine to provide an output of around 175bhp. Getting all that power to the track is the job of the gorgeously sculpted replacement Harris swingarm and Öhlins rear shock.

At the front are the latest Öhlins multi-adjustable racing forks. Weight is pared off the road bike by using a Hiatco rear subframe, while all the road-going paraphenalia such as lights, indicators and clocks were removed and road-going heavy plastics are swopped for thinner, lighter, carbon-fibre race bodywork, again identical to JC's machine. Road yokes and footrests are replaced by Pro-Mach yokes, footrests hangers.

Light weight race wheels are also used. All in all, the parts come to around £22,000, which when you add to the original cost of the bike at £8,500 and labour at £5,000 make a titanic £35,500! Not cheap, but still a cheaper way than most of winning British Superbike races, as it's not that far off John Reynolds' race-winning Crescent machine, according to Simmo. "Aye, there's nothing that you could point at Colin's bike and say JR has got better. No expense has been spared on Colin's bike. The only difference is the fact that JC's ETI race bike has telemetry. That's what Colin wanted."