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RICHARD BURNS CHARITY FUND

t5nyw

By t5nyw
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rasher

rasher

Posted
Posted

taken from the Telegraph today:

Richard Burns

(Filed: 29/11/2005)

Richard Burns, who died from cancer on Friday aged 34, was the second Briton - and the only Englishman - to win the World Rally Championship.

A less flamboyant character than his great rival, the Scot Colin McRae, Burns was remarkable for his determination and for his skills as a tactician. Despite having reached the summit of his chosen profession, he once confessed: "I don't think I am a natural driver? I think there are other people who are more naturally talented than I am."

But if his driving was marked more by thoughtfulness than by a showy sense of style, Burns's courage was never in doubt. "If [fear] enters your mind," he remarked, "then you're not concentrating. "

As for the rivalry with McRae - obviously a matter of intense interest to fans of the sport in Britain - Burns claimed to be unaffected by it. In 2001, the year in which he went on to win the world championship, he was asked whether the Scotsman's higher profile bothered him: "It does when people still have this idea that he's quicker and better," Burns replied. " Do I want to beat him more than others? Well, you have to beat everybody to win, but, yes, it is nice when the guy you're compared to all the time is behind you at the finish."

Richard Burns was born at Reading on January 17 1971. Cars were his passion from boyhood. He learned to drive before he was 10, and was to pass his test only days after his 17th birthday. It was probably a visit to a rally-driving school in Wales when he was 15 which determined him on a career as a rally-driver. To raise the necessary money he worked in a garage and as a shelf-stacker in a supermarket; he also acted as a marshal in rallies on the Welsh borders.

Burns drove in his first rally in 1988, in a Talbot Sunbeam which he had engineered himself, and two years later won the Peugeot Rally Series. His first world championship event was in the RAC Rally in 1990, and in 1993, aged 22, he became the youngest British Rally champion. He first competed in a full series at international level in 1996, with Mitsubishi, remaining with them for three years.

The late 1990s saw Burns build on his early success. He won the British Rally three years in succession (1998-2000). His first World Championship victory was in the highly demanding Safari Rally in Kenya in 1998, and he finished second in the world (behind Tommi Makinen) the next year, and again in 2000, when Marcus Gronholm took the title.

With his co-driver Robert Reid, Burns had 10 victories in the World Championship. They won the World Championship in 2001 after all the leading contenders had crashed out of the final event in appalling weather conditions. Then, however, Burns was involved in a contractual dispute with Subaru, which ended with his moving to Peugeot, who paid him £5 million to join its team.

He was never to repeat his success, however. In 2003 he was driving to Cardiff along the M4, en route to the Rally of Great Britain, when he blacked out at the wheel of his car, a friend having to grab the steering wheel to prevent a serious accident. A brain tumour was diagnosed.

Richard Burns, who published an autobiography, Driving Ambition, in 2002, is survived by his girlfriend, Zoe Keen.

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