Hey, since Jani Paasonen has made an appearance, I thought I'd bring up Alister Mcrae - one of my very favourite drivers who I've always been very interested in. What happened to him? Was he very good?

I remember about 10 years ago he was VERY highly rated, and he seemed destined for great success. When he got the call to replace Makinen at Mitsubishi, it looked like he'd got his big break. But it was a disaster. He didn't seem to beat Delecour even. He even missed the end of the season after badly damaging his liver, and then just faded away after that.

He finished 6th on a one off event at New Zealand 2003 in the Lancer, then a few months later he was quietly dropped. He then turned up in the highly competitive 2004 PWRC. I was still quite new to the sport then, not having so much understanding of it, so I thought he would be overqualified having done WRC, and blow everyone away. He was good but not as good as I thought he would be. He didn't win any rallies, but was very unlucky to lose the title in Australia with 4 stages to go.

When new rules for 2004 initally commanded teams to only have a 3rd driver who hadn't scored a podium in the last 3 years, I couldn't understand why there wasn't a rush to sign him!!! Instead, Citroen for example plumped for Simon Jean-Joseph. (the rule was scrapped anyway).

Does anyone think he was good?