Classic Timer - Écosse - Classic Timer

Omologato - Ecosse

Scotland, or “Ecosse” in French, has long a history of over-achievement, in everything from literature to engineering and the sciences.

Oh, and motor racing.

The country that sits atop Great Britain’s geography is over-represented in wins in everything from Formula One to touring cars and the World Rally Championship - and even land-speed records.

And, while “Ecosse” is less common today, using the French version of the name dates back to the 1295 Auld Alliance/Vieille Alliance with France, where each nation promised to attack England, should one country be invaded by the feisty nation in between them.

Never formally revoked, despite Scotland being a part of Great Britain, the Auld Alliance lead to landmark events in Scottish history, like the Battle of Flodden, the Hundred Years War and the Rough Wooing.

As a word, it has waxed and waned through Scottish history, but Scotland retains a deep attachment to France, whose royal family nurtured Mary, Queen of Scots, well before she became France’s Queen.

Besides being used by an airline, Ecosse was also used as the name of a car (Ascari Ecosse) and many other areas of industry.

And the drivers of Ecosse have excelled, even more so (per capita) than their southern rivals.

There isn’t a branch of motorsport that hasn’t felt the controlled hands and feet of their Scottish rivals, and they’ve won in every motorsport discipline that matters.

From the Formula One World Championship to touring cars, from Le Mans to the Indy 500, Scots have left black tyre marks on every surface cars are raced on.

Why? Marathon man Andrew Cowan put it best.

“We were able to drive in fields, off road and, of course, through all the twisty roads around here where there was practically no traffic in those days. That definitely refined our driving skills. We had advantages the other drivers didn’t.”

Ecosse at speed

The world’s fastest man was once Scottish, with Richard Noble posting 1019km/h in Thrust 2 the Nevada desert in 1983. Noble only lost his record because he asked Andy Green to drive Thrust SSC, when it broke the sound barrier (averaging 1228km/h) in 1997. Even then, Noble ran the effort as the founder and manager.

Ecosse in rallying

From the ridiculous to the sublime, Colin McRae dominated the forests in 1995, winning the World Rally Championship with fellow Scot, Derek Ringer, calling his pacenotes, making Ringer the World Champion co-driver, too.

McRae was the youngest ever WRC champion until Kalle Rovenpera took it last year, a day after his 22^nd birthday.

McRae won 25 World Championship rallies, while his father, Jimmy McRae, took five British Rally Championship crowns.

Scotland’s connection to rallying runs deep, with Louise Aitken-Walker taking the 1990 Ladies World Championship.

In the early days of the World Rally Championship was Andrew Cowan, a friend of Clark’s, who won the 1968 and 1977 London-to-Sydney marathons. Cowan founded and ran the Mitsubishi RalliArt operation that gave Tommi Makinen four consecutive World 

Championships from 1996 to 1999, keeping compatriot McRae from adding to his tally.

At the other end sits Robert Reid, who won the Co-Drivers World Championship alongside Richard Burns in 2001, and is now the FIA’s Deputy President for Sport.

Reid, who remains hugely respected in motorsport, ended his career in 2003, when Englishman Burns blacked out in a road car on the way to the Wales Rally GB, and was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. Burns died four years to the day after he and Reid won the World Championship. 

Reid didn’t want to drive with anybody else, and retired from competition. His only other rally was the Richard Burns Memorial Rally in 2008, alongside Estonian Markko Martin.

Martin, who was in the car with Burns when he blacked out, had also retired from top-level rallying, ending his career when his co-driver Michael “Beef” Park was killed in a crash on the Wales Rally GB in 2005.

They were a good fit, and rally fans wanted them to continue, but their hearts weren’t in it.

Le Mans 24 Hour

The feisty Scott Allan McNish drove for Toyota in Formula One, but is probably best known for winning three Le Mans 24 Hour races in 1998, 2008 and 2013.

A former housemate of Mika Hakkinen, McNish won Britain’s Formula Vauxhall Lotus title in 1988, then finished behind David Brabham in the 1989 British F3 championship before moving to F3000.

With his open-wheel career stalled, he joined Porsche as a 21-year-old to win the 1998 Le Mans 24 Hour in the revolutionary 911 GT1. He joined Toyota, then Audi, which he helped to Le Mans wins in 2008 and 2013. 

Le Mans wasn’t always kind to him, though, and he had an ferocious crash there in 2011, where he vaulted a guardrail and just cleared a photographer, and he crashed out of the lead in 2012.

He retired to commentary after a great sportscar career (he also won the 12 Hours of Sebring four times and was World Endurance Champion in 2013),  becoming a roving ambassador for Audi and managing the Abt Sportsline Formula E team.

Better known as Johnny Dumfries (or, in later life, John Bute), was a junior racing star, winning 14 times on his way to the British F3 title in 1984.

Moving to Formula One team in 1986, he had the misfortune to sit across the garage from Ayrton Senna, who had the Lotus team tailored to his exact needs, and nobody else’s. He lost his drive in 1987 when Honda demanded Lotus take Satoru Nakajima in return for their engines.

Touring Cars

David Leslie was known as a development genius who helped both Honda and Nissan to success in the British Touring Car Championship, but he didn’t just develop cars.

Allan McNish insists he wouldn’t have had a racing career without Leslie’s help, and David Coulthard and Dario Franchitti have said the same thing.

Second in the 1987 World Sportscar Championship, he was also runner up in the 1999 BTCC, taking nine wins in a highly respected career.

Wishaw man John Cleland won the BTCC twice, in 1989 and 1995, and remains a popular character around the sport and in commentary.

With 17 outright wins, the Vauxhall stalwart was happiest when engaged in ferocious wheel-to-wheel combat at the very peak of the BTCC, and even finished second at the Bathurst 1000 in 2001.

Indycars

There is one Scottish name that leaps out from the pages of American racing, and that’s Dario Franchitti.

The more famous Franchitti (his brother, Marino, is a successful sportscar racer), Dario was regularly in the right place, at the right time, at the circuit where it mattered most, on Sunday afternoons at the Indy 500. 

He won it in 2007, 2010 and 2011, and he backed it up by winning the Indycar championship four times, most famously for Chip Ganassi Racing.

After 21 Indycar wins and 59 podiums, injury forced his return to Scotland and he dabbles in historic racing and testing with Gordon Murray.

He wasn’t the only Scot to win the Indy 500, though. Jim Clark won it in 1965, and Sir Jackie Stewart had a lap on the field in 1966, with eight laps to run, when the fuel scavenge pump failed.

Formula One

Ecosse has produced two Formula One World Champions, with five titles between them, and they are two of the sports most enduring legends: Jim Clark and Sir Jackie Stewart OBE.

Statistically, Scotland’s contribution to Formula One racing is stronger even than England’s.

Scotland has delivered 141 Formula One podiums, giving it 26.1 per million people (on the 2021 census), where England’s 526 podiums spread out to 9.4 per million.

Scotland has 66 wins, for 12.2 per million, where England’s 233 wins rate 4.2 per million - behind even Northern Ireland (4.7, with John Watson’s five wins and Eddie Irvine’s four).

Take Lewis Hamilton’s outrageous statistics (103 wins and 192 podiums) away from England and the comparison tilts even further in favour of Ecosse.

Charles Leclerc’s five wins give minuscule Monaco the ridiculous win/population ratio of 131 per million, but Scotland ranks second (and, let’s face it, first out of the adults in the room).

England ranks sixth, with Finland in third (10.4), Northern Ireland fourth and Austria fifth (4.6).

Those who saw Clark race, including Stewart, insist he was the greatest driver of them all; a man capable of dominating a race without exerting the car or its tyres. He raced everything put in front of him, winning the BTCC in 1964 as well as the Indy 500 in 1965. 

His 25 wins stood as the standard until Stewart moved the level to 27, and while Clark died in a Formula 2 crash at Hockenheim, Stewart survived and left a legacy of safety improvements that carries on to this day.

He also left another legacy, by becoming the last person to start a winning Formula One team from scratch, before selling out to Jaguar, who sold it to Red Bull Racing.

They weren’t the only Scots who kicked goals in Formula One, though. 

The gruff Innes Ireland took four podiums and a win (the first for Lotus), while Ron Flockhart snared a podium in Italy in 1956.

Then there was David Coulthard, a fixture whose 15-year Formula One career netted him 13 wins and 62 podiums and led him to second in the World Championship in 2001.

Coulthard was predisposed to become a racing driver. His grandfather competed in the Monte Carlo Rally, and his father had been the Scottish Karting Champion.

For Coulthard as it was for Clark, Stewart, Cowan and McRae, there was just something in the Scottish waters that lead them to be quick...

Omologato are proud to celebrate this history with the very Limited Edition Classic Timer Écosse